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FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY 



REGARDED 



FROM THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 



BY 



CHARLES INGERSOLL. 



" La liberte est un aliinont de bon sue, mais de forte digestion ; il faut des estomacs 
bien sains pour le sujjporter." J. J. Rousseau. 



; J 



7 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1875. 









r 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 

CHARLES INGERSOLL, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



PREFACE. 



These pages, which have been much curtailed 
from what were prepared for the press, in the 
hope, by diminishing their number, of increasing 
the chance of their being read, rest on a position, 
not, indeed, very new, that it is from the people 
government like ours must take its measure; that 
democratic institutions are meaningless when the 
people leave the watch ; beginning to flag when a 
single citizen deserts his duty ; and getting worse 
and worse as skulking goes on. 

Democracy is now, and always has been, a word 
of fear in the United States ; it is so everywhere. 
But whatever we have we owe to it. Prince Gort- 
schakoff, in the darkness of Russian despotism, 
may be an honester man than Mr. Disraeli ; but 
the Englishman stands in the light ; he accounts, if 
not to the people, to the country. 

3 



4 PREFACE. 

On this idea our institutions rest. We trust 
society. But it is composed of materials bad and 
good. If our institutions reflect only the bad 
materials, government is bad and the laws badly 
administered. They are good, or, as good as they 
can be made, when they reflect all. If, reflecting 
all, they are, still, bad, the experiment we make, 
and which every political philosopher, even the 
most hopeful, Mr. Jefferson, for example, has re- 
garded as an experiment, fails, so far. Not en- 
tirely, but so far. 

Every candid man must admit that society, 
with us so highly capable, does not infuse itself 
into government. Government is not inspired by 
all, but, as in other parts of the world, by the 
few. It means the few, not the many. It has 
the same vice here as everywhere. 

There are at least two stages of the experiment 
of representative democracy. There is the experi- 
ment whether the masses possess will and stuff" 
enough of character to have themselves repre- 
sented; and there is, afterwards, the experiment 
whether a government which does represent them 
is capable of governing. 



PREFACE. O 

Under monarchical institutions the central 
idea is the divinity of the king; whom it is a 
religion to respect, though he be the meanest of 
mortals. Under democratic institutions the cen- 
tral idea is the divinity of the people ; but we do 
not respect them at all. 

The word democracy is used by the author, only, 
in its broad sense, not that of party. We are a 
democracy, a representative one ; and there can 
be no party in the United States, whatever it may 
call itself, that is not democratic. It was meant, 
at first, in the questions here considered, not to 
touch points on which there are party differences, 
but that was found impossible, and given up. 
Party the w^riter must see (as who does not?) 
through the mists of his prejudices, and have for 
his errors, if he fall into them, the excuse that 
all have. 

Philadelphia, December, 1874. 



O O ^ T E T^ T S. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAOE 

Democracy at the Time of the Revolution ... 9 

CHAPTER II. 

Democracy in the Federal Convention .... 1*7 

CHAPTER III. 

Democracy an P]xperimeut . . . . . .79 

CHAPTER IV. 

Democracy under the New Government ... 87 

CHAPTER V. 
Democracy comes into Power . . . .114 

CHAPTER VI. 

Apathy of the People ....... 134 

CHAPTER VII. 

Democracy tested by the Institution of Domestic 

Slavery 148 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER Yin. 

PAGE 

Federalism 222 

CHAPTER IX. 

Democracy has to make its Way against Established 

Ideas and the Force of Authority . . . 240 

CHAPTER X. 

Predictions 257 

CHAPTER XI. 

Recapitulation ........ 265 

CHAPTER XII. 

Concludina: Observations ...... 271 



FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY 



REGARDED 



FROM THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 



CHAPTER I. 

DEMOCRACY AT THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION. 
SECTION I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

The world resounds with paeans to liberty, but 
not with the praises of democracy, though with- 
out democracy liberty is incomplete. Those who 
have thought and written for the instruction and 
amusement of mankind have been, commonly, in the 
interest of the great, and of those children of for- 
tune whose support and patronage could be profit- 
able, but whose inclinations are not with the people. 
Shakspeare, writing to please, three centuries ago, 
made the masses contemptible alike for tragedy 
and comedy ; and, at the end of the last century, 
a demagogue, who exclaimed, tJie people, the poor 

2 8 



10 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

jpeople, was denounced, not because he was a wretch 
who cared for nobody, but because he made his 
exclamation in the sense of a declared and deadly 
foe of the aristocracy. It was their cue to think 
the people vile. Shall they be always thought 
vile ? To say that the voice of the people is the 
voice of God is blasphemous ; but to say that the 
voice of all must be more like the voice of God. 
than any other that is heard on earth, is neither 
blasphemous nor foolish. 

In the Old World, where democracy must come 
out of the depths of ignorance, with revolution in 
its wake, the many, with eager hope, and the few, 
with profound apprehension, look to the day when 
the title to power will be the gift of the people. In 
the New World the sentiment towards democracy 
is anomalous. Where the means of comfort and 
happiness are within the easy reach of all, democ- 
racy cannot be wholly out of favor. But it may 
sink, of which we have warnings; for, though the 
day may not return when the people will be wholly 
without consideration, yet the many may prove 
no better than the few, and government, always, 
remain a problem. 

It cannot be superfluous, in a country which 
God has blessed with opportunities such as ours, 
to calculate some of the chances of this prodigious 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 11 

experiment, of which posterity, not we, are to see 
the solution. 

Democracy is no natural system. It is easier 
to be a slave than a freeman. Through men's 
weakness, the inclination is to power; to glitter 
and show ; to the aristocratic ; to high birth, with 
wealth for its accessory, and the qualities of the 
man consigned to the chapter of accidents. This 
yearning is seen in every country. It is seen, in 
the United States, in the ridiculous assumption 
of titles of honour, and the adoration of foreign 
rank, with a certain uneasiness at having none of 
our own. At Rome, though the same man might 
be magistrate, priest, and soldier, classification was 
endless. Not a small part of mankind live in 
caste to this day ; people come into the world to 
conditions in life that are immutable. Women, 
who are half the world, and by their helplessness 
an aristocracy, being the part of creation which 
God has given us to toil and provide for, seldom 
love equality. The idea of an order of men of 
hereditary dignity is one which there never has 
been, and never will be, a time when thoughts 
will not recur to. 

Three hundred years ago Europe was rude, and 
the well-born spread tables for those of inferior 
condition, who fed at their expense, and submitted 



12 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

in return to every species of indignity. A system 
which compelled one of the first of human beings, 
because he was not privileged, to crawl at the feet 
of his insulter, because he was, may assort with 
inveterate prejudices, but it is not civilized.* 

People used to buy from princes fragments of 
authority, and apply them to protect their own 
acquisitions, which otherwise would have been 
wasted by the hand of power. In this way 
arose equality ; republics in Italy and Switzerland ; 
and cities everywhere. It was the foundation of 
modern liberty. Men, being judges of their own 
wants, purchased the right to take care of them. 
It was the origin of the system, which, in the 
United States, has gone so far; and now, there 
seems to be a purpose to counteract, of leaving to 
every patch of territory as much as possible of its 
government. It was the dawn of the modern dem- 
ocratic principle, the first concession to society ; 
not to a class, but to the people. It was the be- 
ginning of that freedom which boasts, not, lam a 
Roman citizen, but, I am a man. 

* Shakspeare is believed to have been the victim of some 
extraordinary ill treatment on the part of a young Earl of 
Pembroke, and to have submitted. See Hallam's and other 
writers' ideas about it. Introduction to the Literature of 
Europe, vol. iii. pp. 31-40. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF YIEW. 13 

SECTION II. 

THE REVOLUTION OF '76 — PREPOSSESSIONS AGAINST DEMOCRACY. 

When the Revolution began, the educated 
thought of America was far from democratic, it 
was English ; but we were free, though dependent, 
and democracy was a social fact. This was true 
of some of the colonies more than of others, but 
everywhere a fact; and when the home govern- 
ment was set aside it became political as well as 
social. The Revolution was not a social revolu- 
tion, and the principal change the colonies under- 
went was the transfer of allegiance ; the crown 
passed from the king to the people. They were 
democratic, by dint of circumstances at work long 
before the Revolutionary leaders were born. De- 
mocracy was a growth ; not coming of thought or 
study, not found by research, or in the meditations 
of lawgivers, but springing from the earth, like a 
fountain. It was the instinct of the people, the 
production of society, as we see society, unaided 
by statesmanship and learning, sometimes hin- 
dered by them, advance itself from century to 
century. Far from being urged by those who 
encouraged the people to break with the British 
crown, it was expressly and strongly disclaimed 



14 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

by them ; but it was inevitable. Had the people, 
instead of being eager for it, been, like their great 
men, indisposed to democracy, where were the in- 
stitutions to which they could turn? where the 
materials out of which to construct a government 
not democratic ? where the power that was not in 
the people? How were they to set up a mon- 
archy ? how preserve and protect it with no aris- 
tocratic support ? Democracy was a fate, and the 
only open question was, how much democracy. 

Did, then, our fathers, the men we worship, 
movers of a revolution, did they repent, would they 
draw back, were they false to the people ? They 
hesitated to jump in the dark; they paused before 
what was terrible; terrible because it was unknown, 
untried, and against the prejudices and opinions of 
the world. Awed by the doubts, and respecting the 
traditions, of mankind, then controlled by preju- 
dices wholly aristocratic, they had no confidence in 
the people, and gave way to democracy with reluc- 
tance. Whoever will take up and examine the 
works of the most liberal thinkers upon the econ- 
omy of nations will be satisfied that, before our 
time, the capacity of society to regulate itself to 
the extent now attempted in the United States, 
never was so much as conceived or imagined. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 15 



SECTION III. 

ANCIENT AND MODERN DEMOCRACY. 

Of ancient democracy, which dates long before 
representation, we have a very imperfect under- 
standing, for want of knowledge of the organiza- 
tion of ancient society. In the events of the old 
republics, their wars, tumults, and disturbances, 
we have the instruction of history, but we have 
only a faint idea of the mutual relations and 
daily existence of individuals. The prevalence 
of frightful debauchery and barbarous cruelty, 
side by side with exalted virtue, like those stu- 
pendous architectural remains that leave every- 
thing modern to look so puny and insignificant, of 
people who were, at the same time, destitute of 
the common conveniences and appliances of daily 
life, makes it probable that ancient and modern 
liberty differ i^ore than we can understand, and 
that from the old to the new there can be neither 
sound argument nor safe deduction. 

Modern democracy has not had its hundred 
years, but it seems to be making its way like a 
Providence, regardless what men think of it, or do. 
In Europe, their only democratic revolution which 
ran its course, that of France in 1789, was a dis- 



16 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

appointment ; too much was looked for. That of 
England in 1640 was a disappointment. In 1848, 
the people were a miserable failure. Nowhere in 
Europe have they made their proofs ; nowhere in 
America have they achieved a triumph to silence 
their enemies. It is, by a large portion of the in- 
telligence of the world, regarded askance where it 
is not regarded with terror. 

But, by what shall it be judged ? By time. 
Democracy came into the world as other systems 
came before it ; as feudalism came, and then mon- 
archy, to be judged by their works. There could 
be no other demonstration. Men did not know 
till they saw that the feudal system was to rule 
Europe, redeem society, rescue civilization, and re- 
store order ; that feudalism being worn out, the 
right of one man to rule all the rest, by the grace 
of God, would establish itself everywhere, and 
occupy the field. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 17 



CHAPTER 11. 

DEMOCRACY IN THE FEDERAL CONVENTION. 
SECTION I. 

THE CONVENTION NOT DEMOCRATIC. 

The men who met in convention, in May, 1787, 
to frame our fundamental laws, saw democracy 
as Numa saw the empire of the Caesars ; they 
saw its infancy, they did not see it conquer the 
world. The day was not come when the French 
Revolution, the career of their own posterity, 
and democratic movement everywhere, brought 
forward the masses, and cast a shadow on birth 
and station. 

During the war, Washington wrote to a friend,* 
who was raising a regiment, " I earnestly recom- 
" mend to you to be circumspect in your choice of ^ 
"officers. Take none but gentlemen." A few years 
earlier, Mr. Adams, who succeeded Washington, 
as the second President of the United States, had 
been placed in his class, at his New England 

* Letter to Colonel George Baylor, January 9, 1111: 
Sparks's Washington, vol. iv. p. 269. 



18 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

school, " according to the dignity of his birth" and 
"the rank of his parents,"* 

A great experiment was to be made ; a people, 
new in their ideas, and starting in their career, 
demanded at the hands of their chiefs, not pure 
democracy, which, necessarily, was out of the ques- 
tion, but an open government, with institutions 
that would leave to it ample scope ; and the con- 
vention submitted to the consideration of the people 
what they called their plan, with more fear than 
hope ; and with little thought that their grain of 
democracy would multiply to the harvest of to- 
day. They were not confident, like their con- 
stituents ; but Mr. Madison, who knew them well, 
has thus recorded their deserts :f " I feel it," he 
says, " a duty to express my profound and solemn 

* " The distinction of ranks was observed with such punc- 
" tilious nicety, that, in the arrangement of members of every 
'-' class, precedence was assigned to every individual accord- 
" ing to the dignity of his birth, or to the rank of his parents. 
" John Adams was thus placed the fourteenth in a class of 
" twenty -four, a station for which he was probably indebted 
"rather to the standing of his maternal family than to that 
"of his father." See Works of John Adams, vol. i. p. 14: 
Fragment of a biography of John Adams by his son John 
Quincy Adams. 

f Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 118: Mr. Madison's " Intro- 
"duction to the Debates in the Convention." 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 19 

" conviction, derived from my intimate opportunity 
*'of observing and appreciating the views of the 
" convention, collectively and individually, that 
" there never was an assembly of men, charged 
" with a great and arduous trust, who were more 
" pure in their motives, or more exclusively or 
" anxiously devoted to the object committed to 
" them, than were the members of the federal con- 
"vention of 1787, to the object of devising and 
" proposing a constitutional system which should 
" best supply the defects of that which it was to 
"replace, and best secure the permanent liberty 
"and happiness of their country." 

He might have added that, judged by their de- 
bates, either the convention of 1787 was a body 
of men very superior to the convention of their 
ancestors, which sat in 1688, or that in it, the 
people having no influence, conclusions had to 
be reached by processes singularly cramped. But 
these American statesmen, though more adventu- 
rous than those of a hundred years before, had not ^ 
stirred the people to democracy, only to independ- 
ence. Four years before, they were claimed as 
British subjects, and eleven years before, they 
boasted they were. The English constitution, made 
by nobody, a bundle of customs, which gave liberty 
to those high enough to reach it, was imitated as 



20 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

far as possible ; it was the freest the modern world 
had seen ; and under it these gentlemen had lived, 
and enjoyed a large measure of liberty. 

In the troubles which preceded the Revolution, 
and the wars and troubles that followed, the colo- 
nial feeling, of which Franklin spoke, in his exam- 
ination before the British House of Commons, in 
1766,* when he said, the people of the colonies 
" have not only a respect but an affection for Great 
" Britain, to be an Old England man was of itself 
" a character of some respect, and gave a kind of 
" rank among us," was yet in life ; it had been 
shaken, but not uprooted. It was the feeling of 
Mr. Jefferson, after hostilities had actually begun, 
and Washington was in the field at the head of 
an army, when he saidf he would rather be in 

* The celebrated examination he underwent, the 3d of 
February, 1166, as to the repeal of the Stamp Act. See 
Sparks's Franklin, vol. iv. p. 169. 

f " This would be thought a hard condition to those who 
"still wish for re-union with their parent country. I am 
" sincerely one of those, and would rather be in dependence 
" on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation on 
" earth, or than on no nation. But I am one of those, too, 
" who, rather than submit to the rights of legislating for us 
" assumed by the British Parliament, and which late experi- 
" ence has shown they will so cruelly exercise, would lend 
"my hand to sink the whole island in the ocean." Letter to 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 21 

dependence upon Great Britain, than on any 
nation on earth, or than on no nation. There 
was not in the convention one man possessed of 
what would be, now, called a democratic spirit. 
While their study was to devise institutions which 
might reconcile the country to their own ideas, and 
to more government than the people wanted, they 
did not run counter to the popular feeling, or 
trifle with it. The answer of that lawgiver to 
the question, what laws he had given his country, 
when he said. As good as they can hear, was pro- 
found. 

We were an unhoused people in 1787, but if 
there had been an attempt to put on us institu- 
tions less than democratic, they would have been 
rejected. New ideas move slow, and those, of all 
others, with whom they move slowest, are the 
men, like those of the federal convention, who, 
having grown up under the old ideas, have to put 
new ones in action, and answer for the conse- 
quences. The members of the federal convention 
indulged not in the high and hopeful vein. In 
adjusting representation to population, it was sug- 
gested that the number of representatives in Con- 
gress might become excessive, on the proposed 

Mr. Randolph, August 23, 1175: Jefferson's Works, vol. i. 
p. 201. 



22 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

unalterable basis of one representative, in the 
lower house, to every forty thousand of popula- 
tion.* The answer was, " It is not to be supposed 
" that the government will last so long as to pro- 
"duce this effect. Can it be supposed that this 
"vast country, including the western territory, 
" will, one hundred and fifty years hence, remain 
" one nation ? . . . If the government should 
" continue so long, alterations may be made in the 
''constitution in the manner proposed in a sub- 
'" sequent article." 

SECTION II. 

THEIR VIEWS OF A JUDICIARY. 

We go on to show in their proceedings, by the 
record of them,f how the members of the con- 

* Madison Papers, vol. iii. pp. 1262, 1263. 

f Journal of the Federal Convention, committed by them 
at their adjournment to the keeping of Washington, as the 
President of the body, with directions to retain it " subject 
"to the order of Congress, if ever formed under the Consti- 
"tution," placed by him in the Department of State, and, 
under act of Congress of 21th March, 1818, published in 
1819. Proceedings and debates in the Federal Convention, 
which Mr. Madison, from day to day, wrote out, and which 
comprise both a journal and report of debates, published 
after his death by Congress, with other papers of his, in the 
year 1840, and known as the Madison Papers. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 23 

vention of 1787, assembled to make a government 
for us, men born in a remote corner of the Brit- 
ish realm, but educated by a revolution ; citizens 
of a world nearly a hundred years behind ours in 
political knowledge, but infinitely superior to any 
statesmen whom, to-day, we could bring together, 
treated that question of democracy, to them a 
source of nothing but uneasiness, and to which 
every succeeding year adds interest and impor- 
tance. 

The old Confederacy may be said to have had 
neither Executive nor Judiciary.* The conven- 
tion resolved that the new establishment should 
be endowed with, what was almost unknown in 
those days, and still is rare, three departments 
or divisions of government, each independent of 
the others, legislative, executive, and judicial. To 
the judiciary they did not hesitate to give, in ac- 
cordance with their decidedly conservative views, 
a life tenure, under executive appointment; the 
judges to be, except in cases of conviction of high 
crimes and misdemeanors, irremovable from office, 
and their salaries incapable of reduction. From 
this frame of a judicial establishment the conven- 
tion do not seem to have varied for a moment. 
The judiciary of their republic was to be high 

* Excepting for admiralty cases. 



24 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

above the reach of influence, and wholly and ab- 
solutely independent of power ; more independent 
than that of the monarchy from which they had 
parted. It has, in effect, higher duties to perform. 

SECTION III. 

THEIR VIEWS OF A LEGISLATITRE — HESITATION TO SUBMIT THE 
CHOICE OP MEMBERS TO THE PEOPLE. 

We pass to legislative power. The members 
of the federal convention were not elected by the 
people ; they were delegated by the legislatures of 
their States. On the 31st of May, in committee 
of the whole, the resolution, " that the members of 
'■'■ the first hranch of the national legislature ought to 
" he elected hy the people of the several States, being 
"taken up,"* Mr. Sherman f "opposed the elec- 
" tion by the people, insisting that, it ought to be 
"by the state legislatures. The people, he said, 
" immediately, should have as little to do as may 
" be about the government. They want informa- 
" tion, and are constantly liable to be misled. Mr. 

* Madison Papers, vol. i. pp. t53-T5t. 

f Roger Sherman, delegate from Connecticut, member of 
the Congress of the Revolution, and signer of the Declara- 
tion of Independence. After the organization of the federal 
government, he sat in the House of Representatives, and 
afterwards in the Senate. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 25 

" Gerry.* The evils we experience flow from the 
" excess of democracy. The people do not want 
" virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. 
" In Massachusetts it had been fully confirmed by 
"experience, that they are daily misled into the 
" most baneful measures and opinions by the false 
" reports circulated by designing men, and which 
"no one on the spot can refute. One principal 
" evil arises from the want of due provision for 
" those employed in the administration of govern- 
" ment. It would seem to be a maxim of democ- 
" racy to starve the public servants. He mentioned 
" the popular clamor in Massachusetts for the re- 
" duction of salaries, and the attack made on that 
"of the Governor, though secured by the spirit 
" of the constitution itself He had, he said, been 
" too republican heretofore ; he was still, however, 
" republican ; but had been taught by experience 

* Elbridge Geny, delegate from Massachusetts, a member 
of the Congress of the Revolution, and signer of the Decla- 
ration of Independence. After the organization of the fed- 
eral government, member of the House of Representatives; 
minister to France ; elected, by the Democratic party, Vice- 
President of the United States on the ticket with Mr. Madi- 
son, in 1813, and, by the Democratic party of Massachusetts, 
Governor of that State, in 1810. He refused to sign the 
Constitution. 

3 



26 FEAES FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

"the danger of the levelling spirit. Mr. Mason* 
" argued strongly for an election of the larger 
" branch by the people. It was to be the grand 
" depository of the democratic principle of the 
" government. It was, so to speak, to be our 

* George Mason, delegate from Yirglnia, friend and neigh- 
bour of Washington, and an ardent supporter of the Revo- 
lution ; regarded as one of the ablest men of his day. His 
statue stands, one of a group, in front of the Capitol at 
Richmond. Mr. Madison (Rives's Life of Madison, vol. i. 
p. 162, note) wrote of his services in the convention, to his 
grandson, who was preparing materials for his ancestor's 
biography : " He sustained throughout the proceedings of 
" the body the high character of a powerful reasouer, a pro- 
" found statesman, and a devoted republican." Mr. Ham- 
ilton described him (Hamilton's Works, vol. vi. p. 557) as 
"professing popular doctrines." He refused to sign the 
constitution, deeming the powers it conferred excessive ; 
and, for the same reason, opposed, with Patrick Henry and 
others, its adoption by his State in the Convention of Vir- 
ginia, of which he was a member. Mr. Jefferson said of him 
(Jefferson's Works, vol. i. pp. 40, 41), " I had many occasional 
" and strenuous coadjutors in debate" (this was in the 
Legislature of Yirginia), " and one, most steadfast, able 
" and zealous, who was himself a host. This was George 
" Mason, a man of the first order of wisdom among those 
"who acted on the theatre of the Revolution, of expansive 
" mind, profound judgment, cogent in argument, learned in 
" the law of our former Constitution, and earnest for the 
"republican change on democratic principles." 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 27 

" House of Commons. It ought to know and sym- 
" pathize with every part of the community ; and 
" ought therefore to be taken not only from differ- 
" ent parts of the whole republic, but also from 
" different districts of the larger members of it ; 
" which had in several instances, particularly in 
" Virginia, different interests and views, arising 
" from difference of produce, of habits, &c., &c. He 
" admitted that we had been too democratic, but 
" was afraid we should incautiously run into the 
"opposite extreme. We ought to attend to the 
" rights of every class of the people. He had often 
" wondered at the indifference of the superior 
" classes of society to this dictate of humanity and 
" policy ; considering, that, however affluent their 
"circumstances or elevated their situations might 
" be, the course of a few years not only might, 
" but certainly would, distribute their posterity 
" throughout the lowest class of society. Every 
"selfish motive, therefore, every family attach- 
" ment, ought to recommend such a system of 
" policy as would provide no less carefully for the 
" rights and happiness of the lowest, than of the 
" highest order of citizens. Mr. Wilson* con- 
* James Wilson, delegate from Pennsylvania, member of 
the Confederate Congress, signer of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United 
States by appointment of Washington. 



28 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

"tended strenuously for drawing the most numer- 
" ous branch of the Legislature immediately from 
"the people. He was for raising the federal 
" pyramid to a considerable altitude, and for that 
"reason wished to give it as broad a basis as possi- 
" ble. No government could long subsist without 
"' the confidence of the people. . . . Mr. Madison 
"considered the popular election of one branch 
" of the National Legislature as essential to every 
" plan of free government. He observed, that in 
" some of the States one branch of the Legislature 
" was composed of men already removed from the 
" people by an intervening body of electors. That 
"if the first branch of the General Legislature 
" should be elected by the State Legislatures, the 
" second branch elected by the first, the Executive 
" by the second together with the first, and other 
"appointments again made for the subordinate 
"purposes by the Executive, the people would be 
"lost sight of altogether; and the necessary sym- 
" pathy between them and their rulers and officers 
" too little felt. He was an advocate for the policy 
"of refining the popular appointments by succes- 
"sive filtrations, but thought it might be pushed 
"too far. . . . Mr. Gerry did not like the elec- 
"tion by the people. The maxims taken from 
"the British constitution were often fallacious 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 29 

"when applied to our situation, which was ex- 
"tremely different. Experience, he said, had 
" shown that the State Legislatures, drawn imme- 
" diately from the people, did not always possess 
"their confidence. He had no objection, however, 
" to an election by the people, if it were so qualified 
" that men of honor and character might not be 
" unwilling to be joined in the appointments. He 
"seemed to think the people might nominate a 
" certain number, out of which the State Legisla- 
"ture should be bound to choose. Mr. Butler* 
" thought an election by the people an impracti- 
" cable mode." No other gentleman addressed the 
convention. " On the question for an election of 
"the first branch of the National Legislature, by 
"the people, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsyl- 
" vania, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Aye — 6; 
" New Jersey, South Carolina, No — 2; Connecticut, 
" Delaware, divided." 

It is not so striking that so much disbelief was 
expressed in the people, and utterance given to 
ideas so totally different from those to-day acted 
on, familiarly and confidently, as it is that there 
should not have been in this assembly found one 
single man to entertain a full belief the other 

* Pierce Butler, delegate from South Carolina, and under 
the federal government a Senator in Congress. 



30 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

way ; * certainly not one to express it, when to 
doubts of the people such decided expression was 
given. 

It was carried by the votes of a majority of the 
States to give the election, to the people, of the 
House of Representatives, lest the people, as Mr. 
Madison said, " be lost sight of altogether ;" to at- 
tend, as Mr. Mason said, "to the rights of every 
" class ;" because, as Mr. Wilson said, " no govern- 
" ment could long subsist without the confidence 
" of the people." Such was the tone of the reason- 
ing of those who maintained the people's rights. 
But some days after, the sixth of June, these views 
not being acceptable, abstemious as- they were, an 
attempt was made to change the vote. 

" Mr. Pinckney,-]- according to previous notice, 

* In his thoughts on the plan, when laid before him, Mr. 
Jefferson said, " I like the power given the Legislature to 
"levy taxes, and for that reason solely I approve of the 
" greater House being chosen by the people directly. For 
" though I think a House so chosen will be very far inferior 
" to the present Congress, will be very illy qualified to legis- 
"late for the Union, for foreign nations, &c., yet this evil 
" does not weigh against the good, of preserving inviolate the 
" fundamental principle, that the people are not to be taxed 
"but by representatives chosen immediately by themselves." 
Letter from Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Madison, Paris, December 
20, 1181: Jefferson's Works, vol. ii. pp. 328, 329. 

f Charles Pinckney, delegate from South Carolina, and 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 31 

" and rule obtained, moved, that the first branch 
" of the National Legislature be elected by the 
" State Legislatures, and not by the people." . . . 
But, after debate* "on the question for electing 
" the first branch by the State Legislatures as 
" moved by Mr. Pinckney, it was negatived, — Con- 
" necticut, New Jersey, South Carolina, Aye — 3 ; 
" Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Dela- 
" ware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Geor- 
" gia, No — 8." Again, the twenty-first of June, 
" General Pinckneyf moved, that the first branch, 
" instead of being elected by the people, should be 
" elected in such manner as the Legislature of each 
"State should direct;" . . . when "on the ques- 
" tion of General Pinckney's motion to substitute 
" election of the first branch in such mode as the 
" Legislatures should appoint, instead of its being 
" elected by the people, — Connecticut, New Jersey, 
" Delaware, South Carolina, Aye — 4 ; Massachu- 
" setts. New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North 
" Carolina, Georgia, No — 6 ; Maryland divided. 

Governor of that State ; minister to Spain, and Senator in 
Congress under the Constitution. 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 800-808. 

f Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, delegate from Southi 
Carolina, a general officer in the war of the Revolution, 
and afterwards, under the Constitution, minister to France; 
candidate for the Vice-Presidency in 1800. 



32 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" General Pinckney then moved that the first 
'' branch be elected by the people in such mode as 
*' the Legislatures should direct; but waived it on 
" its being hinted that such a provision might be 
" more properly tried in the detail of the plan. 
" On the question for the election of the first 
" branch by the people, — Massachusetts, Connecti- 
"cut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Vir- 
"ginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, 
"Aye — 9; New Jersey, No — 1; Maryland divided." 
The opposition to popular election of the lower 
House of Congress appears to have ended here. 

At a later period of the session,* the 7th of 
August, when the draft of the proposed Constitu- 
tion had been reported by a committee with a pro- 
vision that the electors of the House of Represent- 
atives should have the qualifications requisite for 
electors of the most numerous branch of the State 
Legislature, the question of popular suffrage, again, 
was debated. The object of the committee had 
been to avoid giving umbrage. Voters were to 
have the qualifications of voters for the members 
of the House of Representatives of the State ; each 
State to choose, therefore, for itself, restricted or 
unrestricted sufi'rage. 

There was a wide diversity of opinion as to 

* Madison Papers, vol. iii. pp. 1249-56. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 33 

qualifications. Mr. Gouverneur Morris and others 
were for confining suffrage to freeholders ; Dr. 
Franklin thought "we should not depress the 
"virtue and public spirit of our common people." 
Apparently, the convention governed themselves 
by the same motive with the committee which re- 
ported the clause, and they adopted it, nem. con. 
Mr. Madison said, " Whether the Constitutional 
"qualification ought to be a freehold, would with 
" him depend much on the probable reception such 
" a change would meet with in the States where 
" the right was now exercised by every description 
" of people. In several of the States a freehold 
"was now a qualification. Viewing the subject in 
" its merits alone, the freeholders of the country 
"would be the safest depositaries of republican 
"liberty. In future times, a great majority of the 
" people will not only be without landed, but any 
" other sort of property. These will either com- 
" bine, under the influence of their common situa- 
" tion, — in which case the rights of property and 
" the public liberty will not be secure in their 
" hands, — or, what is more probable, they will be- 
" come the tools of opulence and ambition, in which 
"case there will be equal danger on another side." 



34 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 



SECTION IV. 

THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE — ITS DimCULTIES — FRANKLIN'S 
VIEWS ; HAMILTON'S ; JEFFERSON'S IN A LETTER TO MR. MADISON. 

We come to Executive power, to this day the 
strain on democracy. Next to apportionment of 
representation between the small and large States, 
a question which well-nigh broke up the conven- 
tion, it was the Executive question that most per- 
plexed their ingenuity and excited their fears. 
Apportionment of representation pertained to the 
constantly varying fact of population. Of the 
small States, alarmed for their independence, time 
has qualified the fears, and made one of them. New 
York, which in 1787 sought protection for weak- 
ness, the most powerful in the Union ; but time 
has not diminished the fears of Executive power : 
it has increased them. It involves considerations 
as lasting as the vices of our nature ; and has more 
perils than in 1787 were seen. It is the demo- 
cratic problem in its most formidable shape. 

The convention took up the question of an Ex- 
ecutive* the 1st of June, being the third day after 
they entered on the consideration of a frame of 
government ; and having, at various meetings, en- 

* Journal, p. 88. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. OO 

deavored, in vain, to unite on an Executive clause, 
the subject, which was considered, in all, more 
than every third day of all the days the conven- 
tion sat, between the 29th of May, when business 
began, and the 17th of September, the day of the 
final adjournment, was referred, on the 31st of 
August, to a committee, appointed by ballot, of one 
member from each State. This committee, on the 
4th of September,* thirteen days only before the 
final adjournment, reported back a resolution in 
favor of an Executive to consist of a single indi- 
vidual, holding office four years, elected by electors 
appointed by each State, as its Legislature might 
direct. The report of this committee, with al- 
terations, more or less material, which continued 
to be made by the convention, down to the 15th 
of September, forty-eight hours only before the 
adjournment, was, in its main features, adopted. 
It gives us the system, amended by vote of Con- 
gress and the States, in the years 1803-4, after 
the attempt of the House of Representatives to 
make Mr. Burr President, which still exists. 

The apprehensions of the convention may be 
imagined from what was said by its oldest mem- 
ber, and not least cheerful spirit, Franklin.f '' All 

* Journal, p. 324. 

f Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. T90. 



36 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" profitable offices," he said, " will be at his dis- 
" posal. The first man put at the helm will be a 
"good one. Nobody knows what sort may come 
" afterwards. The Executive will be always in- 
^' creasing here as elsewhere, till it ends in 
" monarchy." 

Franklin moved that the Executive receive no 
salary, and, instead, his necessary expenses be paid ; 
his idea seems to have been that the same rule 
ought to extend to as many as possible of the gov- 
/ ernment functionaries. In moving his amendment 
he made a speech, and said, urging his opinions, 
" There is a natural inclination in mankind to 
" kingly government. It sometimes relieves them 
"from aristocratic domination, They had rather 
" have one tyrant than five hundred. It gives more 
" of the appearance of equality among citizens, and 
" that they like. I am apprehensive, therefore, 
" perhaps too apprehensive, that the government of 
" these States may in future times end in a mon- 
" archy. But this catastrophe I think may be long 
" delayed, if in our proposed system we do not sow 
"the seeds of contention, faction, and tumult, by 
" making our posts of honour places of profit." He 
instanced, as serving unpaid, Washington during 
the Revolutionary war, sheriffs of counties in 
England, French counsellors of parliament, and 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 37 

members of the Society of Friends sitting to decide 
lawsuits of their fellows.* 

The idea of Mr. Jefferson that the Presidential 
office, the President being perpetually re-eligible, 
would be, in effect, an office for life, seems to show 
either that he looked, like Franklin, to some- 
what remote events ; or, for the present, had 
formed a very inadequate conception of the press- 
ure of party jealousies to prevent continuity of 
service. He wrote from France to his friend Mr. 
Madison, the vessel of all his though ts,f " Reason 
' and experience tell us, that the first magistrate 
^ will always be re-elected if he may be re-elected. 
' He is then an officer for life. This once ob- 
' served, it becomes of so much consequence to 
'certain nations, to have a friend or foe at the 
' head of our affairs, that they will interfere 
' with money and with arms. A Galloman, or 
' an Angloman, will be supported by the nation 
'he befriends. If once elected, and at a second 
' or third election outvoted by one or two votes, 
' he will pretend false votes, foul play, hold pos- 
' session of the reins of government, be sup- 
' ported by the States voting for him, especially if 
' they be the central ones, lying in a compact body 
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 7Y3-775. 
f Letter from Paris, December 20, 1787 : Jefferson's 
Works, vol. ii. p. 330. 



/, 



38 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" themselves, and separating their opponents ; and 
"they will be aided by one nation in Europe, while 
" the majority are aided by another. The election 
" of a President of America, some years hence, will 
" be much more interesting to certain nations of 
''' Europe, than ever the election of a King of 
" Poland was. Reflect on all the instances in his- 
" tory, ancient and modern, of elective monarchies, 
" and say if they do not give foundation for my 
"fears; the Roman Emperors, the Popes while 
" they were of any importance, the German Em- 
" perors till they became hereditary in practice, the 
" Kings of Poland, the Deys of the Ottoman depend- 
" encies. It may be said, that if elections are to be 
" attended with these disorders, the less frequently 
"they are repeated the better. But experience 
" says, that to free them from disorder they must 
"be rendered less interesting by a necessity of 
"change. No foreign power, nor domestic party, 
" will waste their blood and money to elect a per- 
" son who must go out at the end of a short period. 
" The power of removing every fourth year by the 
" vote of the people, is a power which they will not 
" exercise, and if they were disposed to exercise 
"it, they would not be permitted. The King of 
" Poland is removable every day by the Diet. But 
"they never remove him." 



THE AMERICAN TOINT OF VIEW. 39 

Like Franklin, Mr. Jefferson failed to foresee 
the full effect of a Presidential election upon the 
democratic element ; and both of them seem to look 
to Executive power as leading direct to tyranny, 
and not by the smooth road of a corrupted suffrage. 

Eighty-six years' experience has not convinced 
the country that the federal convention, who, look- 
ing round, saw no example from which to copy, 
and had to decide without precedents, endowed 
their republican Executive with superfluous power, 
power which must not, necessarily, be somewhere 
given, or which could advantageously have been 
withheld from him, or bestowed elsehow or else- 
where. The public mind has settled on no Execu- 
tive constitutional amendment; still less does the 
past show that the Executive ought to have any 
other constituency than the people ; yet it will not 
be doubted that could the convention have seen, as 
we see them, the elections of a President, and the 
use he makes of his power, their fears would have 
multiplied. When Hamilton said, "as to the Execu- 
" five, it seemed to be admitted that no good one 
" could be established on republican principles," he 
was right, if republican principles mean govern- 
ment maintained by its own influence ; and not, in 
the full sense of their better signification, govern- 
ment maintained by the people. 



40 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

* Let US amend ourselves, not the Constitution. 
It ought to reconcile us, if not to patience, to de- 
liberation, that since the federal government has 
been in action, not one scheme has ever been pro- 
duced for modifying Executive power, or the mode 
of electing, except that which proposes what is 
hardly <a change, the direct vote of the people 
instead of electoral colleges, which has had suffi- 
cient merit to attract attention ; and most of them 
have been strongly objectionable. Mr. Calhoun's* 
was a double Executive, an extraordinary mistake. 
The recent change, not by amendment, but new 
construction of the Constitution, by which the 
Senate are consulted upon removals from office, has 
had the effect not of purifying patronage, but of 
drawing more into its vortex the Senators. When 
the amendment was proposed in 1826, the most 
plausible and the least of an alteration, to take 
the election from the electoral colleges and give it 
to the people, a striking suggestion, among others, 
made in opposition to it in debate in the House of 
Kepresentatives, was, that to substitute a general 
poll for the vote by electors chosen by States, with 
an appeal, if no choice were effected, to the House 
of Representatives voting by States, would be cen- 

* Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the 
United States : Calhoun's Works, vol. i. pp. 392-395. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 41 

tralizing in its effect on federal institutions. It 
may be remarked, too, in illustration of the revo- 
lutions in men's opinions, that this fear was sug- 
gested by a member from New York, and the 
amendment disregarding it was proposed by a 
member from South Carolina. 

An elective chief is an experiment. We do not 
see power turn the heads of judges and legislators; 
only of the Executive. He may be drawn from 
obscurity and return to it; but he does not resign, 
like a minister; he is upheld till his sands are 
run, like a king, and upheld in courses which, 
in a minister, would not be tolerated : this is the 
constitution. It has been the history, in bad times, 
of all countries, that no crime is too great to gain 
Executive power or to retain it. 

These men who sat in the convention were in 
presence of a question, this, as Hamilton called it, 
of an Executive chief "on republican principles," 
which has been never solved. Anxious to do their 
duty, not rash in its performance, fearing the Ex- 
ecutive, fearing democracy more ; when they came 
to this part of their proceedings the debates show 
they paused, hesitated, changed their minds again 
and again, and took back what they had done, only 
to repeat it ; and at last were far from satisfied 
with their work. What else could they do ? But 



,42 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

it is the source from which liave flowed the worst 
ills that afflict us, and is the immediate source of 
the gravest of the fears for the fate of our insti- 
tutions. The lack of energy they witnessed in the 
Confederacy, for war or peace, as well as their own 
inclinations, disposed them to a vigorous Executive. 
They resolved to bestow, and they did bestow, and 
the States were prevailed on to accept. Executive 
powers, only nominally less than those of the mon- 
arch from whose rule they had emancipated them- 
selves ; for he was but a king ; while the Presi- 
dent combines the conditions of minister and king 
too ; and his power of patronage has been found 
capable to be carried much beyond the degree of 
mischief which Franklin imagined for it. 

SECTION v. 

THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED— OF THE THREE 
DRAFTS OF A CONSTITUTION, TWO PROPOSED GIVING THE CHOICE 
OF THE EXECUTIVE TO THE LEGISLATURE. 

Of the three projects before the convention, that 
of Mr. Pinckney, and those of the States of Vir- 
ginia and New Jersey, the two last proposed an 
Executive chosen by the Legislature. The resolu- 
tion of the Virginia draft for the groundwork of a 
closer union of the States, presented the 29th of 
May, in the name of that delegation, at the open- 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 43 

ing of tlie business of the convention, and which 
they adopted, for, as it were, a point of depart- 
ure, was, '^ that a National Executive be insti- 
"tuted, to be chosen by the National Legislature 

"for the term of years."* The resolution 

contained in what was known as the New Jersey 
plan, presented the 15th of June, a plan especially 
meant to subserve the views of the smaller States, 
gave, like that of the Virginia delegation, the 
choice of the Executive to Congress ; but it divided, 
unlike the Virginia draft. Executive power among 
two or more persons. It proposed f "that the 
"United States in Congress be authorized to elect 

" a Federal Executive to consist of persons, 

" to continue in office for tlie term of years." 

By Mr. Pinc.kney's plan, laid by him, as an 
individual member, before the convention, on the 
same day with that coming from the Virginia dele- 
gation, it was proposed that Executive power be 
vested in a President ; nnd that he should be 

"elected for years." | By whom to be 

elected was not suggested. The suggestion was 
not ventured by Mr. Pinckney who should choose 
the chief of the republic, nor how he was to be 
controlled should he conspire against it. 

These were the several constitutional plans, so 

* Journal, p. 68. f lb., pp. 124, 125. % lb., p. 77. 



44 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

called, that of Mr. Pinckney, and those of the dele- 
gations of New Jersey and Virginia, which were 
before the convention for their consideration. 
That of Mr. Hamilton, presented in the course of 
his speech of the 18th of June, suggesting those 
doubts of republican government, which were at 
that day more freely than now avowed, was said 
by him, in the course of his observations, to be 
produced as explanatory of his constitutional 
views, but not with any purpose or hope of its 
being adopted by the convention.* Of the three 
schemes of government, there existing neither real 
nor pretended confidence in the people, though 
finally appealed to, the appointment of an Execu- 
tive by the Legislature was proposed in two of 
them ; but none proposed a popular election. 

SECTION VI. 

THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED MOTION FOR A CHOICE 

BY THE PEOPLE NEGATIVED, TWO STATES ONLY VOTING FOR IT. 

The Virginia draft being under consideration, 
before other opinions had been expressed on the 
floor, Mr. Wilson, who, Franklin perhaps ex- 
cepted, may be said, judged by the debates, to 
have been the person, in the whole body, of the 
most liberal views, and whom Washington, never 

* Journal, p 130; Madison Papers, vol. ii pp. 818-892. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. . 45 

prodigal of praise, called* "as able, candid, and 
" honest a member as was in the convention," rose, 
and thus modestly introduced his idea, of a more 
democratic source of Executive power than the 
votes of a legislative assembly. lie said,f ''he 
" was almost unwilling to declare the mode which 
" he wished to take place, being apprehensive that 
" it might appear chimerical. He would say, how- 
'* ever, at least that in theory he was for an election 
" by the people. Experience, particularly in New 
" York and Massachusetts, showed that an election 
" of the first magistrate b_y the people at large was 
'' both a convenient and successful mode. The 
" objects of choice in such cases must be persons 
" whose merits have general notoriety. He wished 
" to derive not only both branches of the Legisla- 
" ture from the people without the intervention of 
" the State Legislatures, but the Executive also, 
" in order to make them as independent as possible 
"■ of each other, as well as of the States." 

Such was the voice of a^Dprobation, in 1787, of 
the mighty people. Theory said they must be 
trusted, and, practically, no other course would 
consist with republican principles. 

* Letter to Mr. Stuart, October 17, 1787 : Sparks's Wash- 
ington, vol. ix. p. 271. 

f Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 766. 



46 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

Mr. Mason "favors the idea, but thinks it im- 
" practicable. He wishes, however, that Mr. Wil- 
" son might have time to digest it into his own 
"form." Accordingly, the next day, the 2d of 
June, Mr. Wilson* produces his scheme; and 
moves to substitute for the mode of election pro- 
posed in the Virginia draft, " that the executive 
" magistracy shall be elected in the following man- 

" ner : That the States be divided into dis- 

"tricts, and that the persons qualified to vote in 
" each district for members of the first branch of 

" the National Legislature elect members for 

" their respective districts, to be electors of the 
"executive magistracy; that the said electors of 

" the executive magistracy meet at , and they, 

" or any of them, so met, shall proceed to 

" elect by ballot, but not out of their own body, 

" person — in whom the executive authority 

" of the National Government shall be vested." 
"Onf the question for agreeing to Mr. Wilson's 
"substitute, it was negatived, — Pennsylvania, 
" Maryland, Aye — 2 ; Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
" New York, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, 
" South Carolina, Georgia, No — 8." Two States 
for, and eight against electing the Executive by the 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 768, 769, 
t lb., p. 770. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 47 

people. "On* the question for electing the Exec- 
"utive by the National Legislature, for the term 
" of seven years, it was agreed to, — Massachusetts, 
" Connecticut, New York, Delaware, Virginia, 
" North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Aye — 8; 
" Pennsylvania, Maryland, No — 2." 

SECTION VII. 

THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED— MOTION, AGAIN, FOR 
CHOICE BY THE PEOPLE VOTED DOWN, ONE STATE FOR IT, ONLY. 

Here seemed to end, by this heavy majority 
against it, the consideration of the question of a 
popular election of the head of the government. 
But the choice by the Legislature, though it might 
be unavoidable, being obviously objectionable, Mr. 
Gerry, on the 9th of June, introduced the subject 
again ; and, to avoid, as he said, " intrigue and 
" corruption between the Executive and Legisla- 
" ture,"*|- moved the appointment of the Executive 
of the Union by the Executives of the States. 
This was voted down, every State against it, except 
Delaware, of which the vote was divided. 

On the 17th of July, the resolution for a choice 
by the Legislature, until then in committee, came 
into the House, and was again debated; Mr. 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 770. 
t lb., pp. 828-830. 



48 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

Gouverneur Morris,* a supporter of the strongest 
form of government, and an avowed disbeliever in 
any other, going beyond Mr. Wilson, and declaring 
for an election directly by the people.f Mr. Mor- 
ris's idea, doubtless, was not so much to give to 
the people as to fortify the Executive ; his motion 
was to " strike out National Legislature, and in- 
*' sert citizens of the United States." ..." If the 
"people should elect," he said, " they will never 
" fail to prefer some man of distinguished charac- 
" ter, or services." . . . "If the Legislature elect, 

* Gouverneur Morris, a citizen of New York, by which 
State he was sent to the Continental Congress, where he 
became a prominent member ; and afterwards, being tem- 
porarily a resident of Philadelphia, was chosen one of the 
Pennsylvania delegation to the Convention, in the proceed- 
ings of which he bore a distinguished part, and towards the 
close had imposed on him the office of reducing to system 
and order the various resolutions of that bod}'' during their 
four months' session ; a task he so happily accomplished as to 
give to the Constitution of the United States a clearness of 
method and expression which has made conscientious doubts 
about its meaning rare. He was appointed bj Washington 
agent of the United States at London when circumstances 
were such that we could yet send no minister there ; and 
afterwards the minister at Paris. On his return home he 
was elected to the Senate, where he opposed, but in a manlj 
and independent manner, the administration of Mr. Jefferson. 

f Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1119-1124. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 49 

" it will be the work of intrigue, of cabal, and of 
" faction ;"..." real merit will rarely be the 
" title to the appointment." ..." It is said the 
" people will be led by a few designing men. This 
" might happen in a small district. It can never 
''happen throughout the continent."* 

While Mr. Wilson, a friend of the people, and 
Mr. Morris, a friend of power, united in these 
views, which at last prevailed, the " patronage," 
which Franklin's sagacity denounced, lay behind, 
and has enabled power to organize a system throw- 
ing legislative cabal into the shade and darkening 
the rights of the people. The debate proceeded : 
Mr. Pinckney said, he " did not expect this ques- 
"tion would again have been brought forw^ard; an 
"election by the people being liable to the most 
" obvious and striking objections. They will be 
"led by a few active and designing men. The 
"most populous States by combining in favor of 
"the same individual will be able to carry their 
" points." " Mr. Sherman thought that the sense 
" of the nation would be better expressed by the 
" Legislature, than by the people at large. The 
" latter will never be sufficiently informed of char- 
" acters, and, besides, will never give a majority of 
" votes to any one man. They will generally vote 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1119-1124. 



50 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" for some man in their own State, and the largest 
" State will have the best chance for the appoint- 
" ment." " Mr. Mason said, he conceived it would 
"be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper 
" character for Chief Magistrate to the people, as 
"it would to refer a trial of colors to a blind man. 
" The extent of the country renders it impossible 
" that the people can have the requisite capacity 
"to judge of the respective pretensions of the can- 
" didates." "Mr. Williamson* conceived that there 
" was the same difference between an election, in 
" this case, by the people and by the Legislature, 
" as between an appointment by lot and by 
" choice. 

" On the q^aestion of an election by the people, 
" instead of the Legislature, it passed in the nega- 
" tive,f — Pennsylvania, Aye — 1 ; Massachusetts, 
" Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, 
" Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Geor- 
"gia, No— 9." 

* Hugh Williamson, delegate from North Carolina, and 
member of the Confederate Congress, 
"j" Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 1124. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 51 



SECTION VIII. 

THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED — MOTION TO GIVE 
THE CHOICE TO THE STATE LEGISLATURES VOTED DOWN AGAIN — 
UNANIMOUSLY VOTED TO GIVE THE CHOICE TO THE LEGISLATURE. 

'' Upon this Mr. L. Martin moved that the Ex- 
"ecutive be chosen by electors appointed by the 
" several Legislatures of the individual States.* 
" Mr. Broome seconds.f On the question, it 
" passed in the negative, — Delaware, Maryland, 
'*• Aye — 2 ; Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jer- 
" sey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, 
" South Carolina, Georgia, No — 8. On the ques- 
'' tion on the words, ' to be chosen by the National 
" ^ Legislature,' it passed unanimously in the affirm- 
" ative." The Legislative body, therefore, was to 
choose the Executive ; this seemed settled. 

SECTION IX. 

THEIR VIEWS or AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED — RECONSIDERATION 
AND VOTE TO CHOOSE BY ELECTORS APPOINTED BY STATE LEGIS- 
LATURES. 

On the 19th of July,J the third day after it had 
passed unanimously to choose by the Legislature, 
it was moved by Mr. Gouverneur Morris, who 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1124, 1141-1150. 
f Jacob Broome, a delegate from Delaware. 
I Journal, pp. 190, 191 ; Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1141- 
1150. 



52 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

had not abandoned his broader views, and passed 
unanimously, " to reconsider generally the consti- 
' tution of the Executive ;" when " Mr. Ellsworth* 
' moved to strike out the appointment by the 
' National Legislature, and to insert to be chosen 
' by electors, appointed by the Legislatures of the 
' States ;" according to certain ratios of population 
designated by him, " The question, as moved by 
'• Mr. Ellsworth, being divided, on the first part, 
' ' shall the National Executive be appointed by 
' ' electors ?' — Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsyl- 
' vania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Aye — 6 ; 
' North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, No — 3 ; 
• Massachusetts, divided. On the second part, 
' ' shall the electors be chosen by the State Legis- 
' ' latures ?' — Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jer- 
' sey, Pennsylvania. Delaware, Maryland, North 
' Carolina, Georgia, Aye — 8 ; Virginia, South Caro- 
'lina, No — 2. The part relating to the ratio in 
' which the States should choose electors was post- 
' poned nem. conr 

Some of the States which had voted on the 
17th for election by the National Legislature, and 

* Oliver Ellsworth, delegate from Connecticut; a member 
of the Confederate Congress. Under the federal government 
he was a Senator, minister to France, and the Chief Justice 
of the United States. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 53 

against an election by electors chosen by the State 
Legislatures, now had changed their votes, and 
supported the mode of election which on the 17th 
they opposed. Pennsylvania, which on the 17th 
voted for an election by the people, in voting 
on the 19th for an election by electors, probably, 
changed her vote and not her opinion ; accepting 
an election by electors, one directly by the people, 
which would seem to have been her preference, 
not being attainable. 

SECTION X. 

THEIR VIEWS OK AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED— ANOTHER RECONSID- 
ERATION — VOTES FOR A CHOICE BY THE LEGISLATURE. 

Five days later, the 24th of July, the appoint- 
ment of the Executive by electors being reconsid- 
ered, the convention fell back to the ground they 
first occupied.='= " Mr. Houstonf moved that he be 
"appointed by the National Legislature, instead 
" of electors appointed by the State Legislatures, 
'' according to the last decision of the mode." 
After debate, the vote was taken " on Mr. Hous- 
" ton's motion, that the Executive be appointed 



* Journal, pp. 200, 201 ; Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1188- 

1196. 

f William Houston, delegate from Georgia. He did not 

siern the Constitution. 



54 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" by the National Legislature, — New Hampshire, 
" Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, North 
" Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Aye — 7 ; Con- 
"necticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, No 
" — 4." Thus they returned once more to their re- 
solve to appoint the Executive by the Legislature. 
Notwithstanding this vote, the debate was, per- 
haps irregularly, continued, on the question of the 
mode of choice, incidentally to the questions of 
length of service and eligibility for more than one 
term; and Mr. Wilson moved that the Executive 

be chosen every ''- years by electors to be 

'' taken by lot from the National Legislature, who 
"shall proceed immediately to the choice of an 
" Executive, and not separate until it be made." 
The motion was held to be not out of order, and 
Mr. King* moved a postponement, and was sec- 

* Rufus King, delegate from Massachusetts, and one of 
the representatives of that State in the Confederate Con- 
gress. He removed to New York, whence he was chosen, in 
1789, to the Senate of the United States. Of Federal poli- 
tics, his course, nevertheless, was such in coming forward to 
the support of the country in the war of 1812, that the New 
York Legislature, then Democratic, called him from private 
life, to which he had retired, and elected him a Senator. He 
was minister to England, where he represented the country 
in Washington's time, during all the time of Mr. Adams, and 
part of that of Mr. Jefferson. He was again minister to 
England under Mr. John Quincy Adams. 



THE AMERICAN TOINT OF VIEW. 55 

onded by Mr. Wilson, " who did not move this as 
" the best mode. His opinion remained unshaken 
'' that we ought to resort to the people for the 
"election. On the question of a postponement it 
" was agreed to, nem. con.'' 

'' The next day, the 25th of July, the clause 
" relative to the Executive being again under con- 
'" sideration," the subject was in some confusion 
from debate being persisted in after a vote appar- 
ently final had been taken. Two motions were 
made, unsuccessfully: the first was, that the Ex- 
ecutive be appointed, in certain events, by the 
National Legislature, in others, by electors chosen 
by the State Legislatures ; the second was, that 
the Executive be appointed by the Governors and 
councils of States, and, where there were no coun- 
cils, by electors chosen by the State Legislatures. 

" Mr. Gerry and Mr. Butler moved to refer the 
"resolution relating to the Executive (except the 
"clause making the Executive consist of a single 
" person) to the committee of detail. Mr. Wilson 
" hoped that so important a branch of the system 
" would not be committed until a general principle 
" should be fixed by a vote of the House," and the 
House* adjourned without a vote ; no '' general 
principle" being fixed. 

* Journal, pp. 201-203; Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1197- 
1207. 



56 FEARS FOE DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

The next day, on the meeting of the convention, 
Mr. Mason rose, and, with a mixture of sarcasm 
and admonition, spoke thus : " In every stage of 
" the question relative to the Executive, the diffi- 
"culty of the subject, and the diversity of the 
"opinions concerning it, have appeared. Nor 
" have any of the modes of constituting that De- 
" partment been satisfactory. First, it has been 
" proposed that the election should be made by the 
" people at large ; that is, that an act which ought 
" to be performed by those who know most of emi- 
" nent characters and qualifications, should be per- 
" formed by those who know least; secondly, that 
" the election should be made by the Legislatures 
" of the States ; thirdly, by the Executives of the 
*' States. Against these modes, also, strong objec- 
" tions have been urged. Fourthly, it has been 
" proposed that the election should be made by 
"electors chosen by the people for that purpose. 
" This was at first agreed to, but, on further con- 
" sideration, has been rejected. Fifthly, since 
"which, the mode of Mr. Williamson, requiring 
" each freeholder to vote for several candidates, 
" has been proposed. This seemed, like many 
" other propositions, to carry a plausible face, but 
" on the closer inspection is liable to fatal objec- 
" tions. . . . Sixthly, another expedient was 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 57 

" proposed by Mr. Dickinson, which is liable to so 
" palpable and material an inconvenience that he 
" had little doubt of its being by this time rejected 
" by himself. . . . Seventhly, among other ex- 
" pedients a lottery has been introduced. . . . 
" After reviewing all these various modes, he was 
"• led to conclude that an election by the National 
"' Legislature, as originally proposed, was the best. 
" If it was liable to objections, it was liable to 
" fewer than any other. He conceived, at the 
'' same time, that a second election ought to be 
'•'• absolutely prohibited. Having for his primary 
" object — for the polar star of his political conduct 
'' — the preservation of the rights of the people, 
" he held it as an essential point, as the very pal- 
" Indium of civil liberty, that the great officers of 
" state, and particularly the Executive, should at 
" fixed periods return to that mass from which they 
'' were at first taken, in order that they may feel 
" and respect those rights and interests which are 
" again to be personally valuable to them. He con- 
" eluded with moving, that the constitution of the 
" Executive, as reported by the committee of the 
" whole, be reinstated ;" namely, that the Execu- 
tive " be chosen by the National Legislature." 
The question being taken on Mr. Mason's motion, 
"it passed in the affirmative, — New Hampshire, 



58 FEAES FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, 
" South Carolina, Georgia, Aye — 7 ; Connecticut, 
" Pennsylvania, Delaware, No — 3 ; Massachusetts 
"not on the floor."* 

SECTION XI. 

THEIR VIEWS or AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED — COMMITTEE REPORT 
THE DRAFT OF A CONSTITUTION WITH A PROVISION FOR THE 
CHOICE OF THE EXECUTIVE BY THK LEGISLATURE. 

On the same day, after resolving that it be an 
instruction to the committee to receive a clause or 
clauses requiring certain qualifications of property 
and citizenship for the Executive, Judiciary, and 
Legislature, every resolution of the convention, 
those relative to powers legislative, executive, and 
judicial, and all others, together with the " propo- 
" sitions offered by Mr. C. Pinckney on the 29th 
"of May, and by Mr. Pattersonf on the 16th of 
" June," were referred, in effect, whatever had been 
done, since the first day's session, to what was 
styled the committee of detail ; and the conven- 
tion adjourned from the 26th of July to the 6th of 
August, '• that this committee might prepare and 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1207-1210. 

■j- William Patterson, delegate from New Jersey, the in- 
troducer of what were called the New Jersey Resolutions, 
a Senator of the United States, Governor of New Jersey, 
and afterwards Judge of the Supreme Court of the^ United 
States. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 59 

" report the constitution."* On the 6th of August 
their draft, comprised in twenty-three articles, was 
submitted by the committee, and a copy furnished 
to each member. 

The Executive section, the first of the tenth 
article, was reported as follows :f " The Executive 
"power of the United States shall be vested in a 
" single person. His style shall be, ' The Presi- 
" ' dent of the United States of America,' and his 
"title shall be, 'His Excellency.' He shall be 
" elected by ballot by the Legislature. He shall 
"hold his office during the term of seven years; 
" but shall not be elected a second time." 



SECTION XII. 

THEIR VIKWS OF AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED — EFFORTS TO TAKE THE 
CHOICE FROM THE LEGISLATURE, ENDING IN A REFERENCE TO A 
COMMITTEE OF ONE DELEGATE FROM EACH STATE, "WHO REPORT A 
CHOICE BY electors: SUBSTANTIALLY THE EXISTING SYSTEM. 

The convention now proceeded to consider, ar- 
ticle by article, the committee's draft, and on the 
24th of August reached the Executive section, the 
first of the tenth article. " On the question for 
" vesting power in a single person, — it was agreed 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1210-1220; Journal, pp. 
203-206. 

t Journal, pp. 224, 225. 



60 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

"to, nem. co7i.^ Mr. Carrollf moved to strike out 
" 'by the Legislature/ and insert 'by the people. '{ 
" Mr. Wilson seconded him ; and on the question, 
" — Pennsylvania, Delaware, Aye — 2 ; New Hamp- 
" shire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, 
" Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Caro- 
" lina, Georgia, No — 9." Again a popular vote was 
supported by two States only. 

" Mr. Gouverneur Morris now moved that the 
"President 'shall be chosen by electors to be 
" chosen by the people of the several States.' Mr. 
" Carroll seconded him ; and on the question, it 
" passed in the negative,§ — Connecticut, New Jer- 
" sey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Aye — 5 ; 
" New- Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maryland, North 
"Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, No— 6. Mr. 
" Dayton|| moved to postpone the consideration of 

* Madison Papers, vol. iii. p. 1417. The words of the 
Journal are, " Separate questions being taken on the first, 
" second, and third clauses of the first section, tenth article, 
"as reported, they passed in the affirmative." 

■\ Daniel Carroll, delegate from Maryland, member of Con- 
gress under the Confederacy, and under the Constitution of 
the United States. 

J Madison Papers, vol. iii. p. 1418; Journal, pp. 286, 287. 

§ Madison Papers, vol. iii. pp. 1420, 1421. 

[| Jonathan Dayton, delegate from TvTew Jersey ; under the 
Constitution Speaker of the House of Representatives, and 
afterwards a Senator. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 61 

''the two last clauses of Article 10, Sect. 1, which 
" was disagreed to without a count of the States. 

" Mr. Brootne moved* to refer the two clauses 
" to a committee, of a member from each State ; 
"and on the question, it f^iiled, the States being 
"equally divided, — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
"Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Aye — 5; New 
'^ Hampshire, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South 
"Carolina, Georgia, No— 5 ; Connecticut divided. 

" On the question taken on the first part of Mr. 
"Gouverneur Morris's motion, to wit: 'shall be 
" ' chosen by electors,' as an abstract question, it 
" fjxiled, the States being equally divided,-]- — New 
"Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Aye 
" — 4; New Hampshire, North Carolina, South 
" Carolina, Georgia, No — 4 ; Connecticut, Mary- 
" land, divided ; Massachusetts, absent. The con- 
"sideration of the remaining clauses of Article 10, 
"Sect. 1, was then postponed." 

Mr. Hamilton said, in his speech of the 18th of 
June, that a republican Executive was a problem ; 
and the convention, whose task was to found an 
empire, but an empire for the free, had, so ftir, 
failed to find the solution of it. " This subject," 
said Mr, Wilson,J " has greatlj^ divided the house, 

* Madison Papers, vol. iii. p. 1421. f Ibid. 

X Ibid., p. 1491. 



62 FEAES FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" and will also divide the people out of doors. 
" It is, in truth, the most difficult of all on which 
"we have to decide."* Mr. Williamson, objecting 
to a single magistrate, said, "he will be an elect- 
" ive king, and will feel the spirit of one. He 
" will spare no pains to keep himself in for life, 
" and will then lay a train for the succession 
"of his children. It was pretty certain, he 
"thought, that we should at some time or other 
"have a king; but he wished no' precaution to be 
" omitted that might postpone the event as long 
" as possible. Ineligibility a second time appeared 
"to him to be the best precaution." Mr. Ran- 
dolphjf on the same subject, said, " we have, in 
" some revolutions of this plan, made a bold 
" stroke for monarchy." 

If election by the people was too democratic, in 
the sense of these opinions, appointment by Con- 
gress seemed to follow ; but, that Congress should 
appoint was equally against the sense of the con- 
vention. Mr. Wilson's reckoning was that it wasj 
" the unanimous sense that the Executive should 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 1189. 

•|- Edmund Randolph, delegate fi-om Virginia, Governor of 
that State, and Attorney-Greneral ; under the Constitution At- 
torney-General of the United States and Secretary of State. 

J Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 1147. 



TUE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 63 

" not be appointed by the Legislature unless he be 
" rendered ineligible a second time." It was, said 
the same gentleman, very decidedly and strongly, 
if not unanimously, regarded to be a false principle 
in laying the foundations of the republic, to put 
the election of the Executive in the hands of the 
makers of the laws. It was thought damaging, 
if not ruinous, to both those branches of the gov- 
ernment. 

In republics the legislative is understood to be 
the strongest power.* They desired to balance a 
power which, in not remote history, had been seen 
to overwhelm the sovereign in England, and was 
about to repeat in the kingdom of their French 
ally what had happened in the mother country. 
They feared to put the President at the feet of the 
Legislature ; they feared to make Congress the 
scene of perpetual intrigue. A Legislature, com- 
posed of men of education and intelligence, might 
be more discerning of merit than the masses, and 

* The President, between 18G4 and 1868, was compelled 
to administer bis office with a cabinet, some, or all, of whom 
were hostile to him ; he had not power to change them. By 
the act of March 2, 1867, his powers as Commander-in- 
Chief were crippled. The veto power fell before the two- 
thirds majorities in both Houses. The power to remove, 
any more than appoint, without the consent of the Senate, 
was taken away. 



64 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

less liable to the sway of passion ; but could it be 
ventured to leave them, besides making the Liws, 
the unbridled choice of the citizen to whom was 
to be committed the power to see them executed ; 
the power of action, the power of appointment, 
the power of pardon, the veto power, and others 
destined to the chief of the government ? 

On Fridny, the 31st of August, this difficult 
question, to posterity so momentous, to democracy 
so unmanageable, hitherto, was once more referred 
for consideration. It was committed, with other 
unsettled points, to a committee, chosen by ballot, 
of one member from each State; and on the 4th of 
September they reported a President to hold office 
four years, to be elected by electors appointed, in 
each State, in such manner as its Legislature might 
direct; and from this, as a principle, the conven- 
tion, having adopted it,* the 6th of September, by 
a vote of nine States against two, did not depart. 

They adhered from no confidence in it ; despair 
of a better, the impossibility to satisfy themselves 
in the adjustment, should the Legislature choose 
the President, of points like that of the veto, im- 
peachment, and others pertaining to Executive 
powers and restrictions, where executive and legis- 

* Journal, pp. 332-338; Madison Papers, vol. iii. pp. 1485- 
1492. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 65 

lative functions mnst mix and conflict; and the 
conviction that the perils of cabal were, in any 
event, inseparable from an election by the Legisla- 
ture, was the consideration which reconciled the 
convention to the system they at last adopted of 
electors; but not electors chosen, necessarily, by 
the people; "electors appointed in each State in 
" such manner as its Lesrislature mio-ht direct." 

When the report of the committee came in, "Mr. 
' Randolph and Mr. Pinckney wished for a partic- 
' ular explanation and discussion of the reasons 
'for changing the mode of electing the Execu- 
' tive. Mr. Gouverneur Morris said, he w^ould 
'give the reasons of the committee, and his own. 
' The first was the danger of intrigue and faction, 
' if the appointment should be made by the Legis- 
'lature. The next was the inconvenience of an 
' ineligibility required by that mode, in order to 
' lessen its evils. The third was the difficulty of 
' establishing a court of impeachment, other than 
' the Senate, which would not be so proper for the 
'trial, nor the other branch, for the impeachment 
' of the President, if appointed by the Legislature. 
' Tn the fourth place, nobody had appeared to be 
' satisfied with an appointment by the Legislature. 
' In the fifth place, many were anxious even for 
' an immediate choice by the people. And, finally, 



66 FEAES FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" the sixth reason was the indispensable necessity 
" of making the Executive independent of the 
" Legislature. As the electors would vote at the 
'•' same time, throughout the United States, and at 
'■ so great a distance from each other, the great 
"evil of cabal was avoided. It would be impossi- 
'• ble, also, to corrupt them, A conclusive reason 
" for making the Senate, instead of the Supreme 
•'Court, the judge of impeachments, was, that the 
"• latter was to try the President, after the trial of 
"the impeachment."* 

That by this system the convention intended 
the electors actually, not nominally, to choose the 
President, might be inferred from the prevalent 
feeling against democracy. It has been seen that, 
when the question was before the convention, of 
what seems to have been regarded as the sug- 
gestion of a jDopular vote, opinions in strong dis- 
paragement of such a choice were expressed in 
unqualified terms; but it ought to be not unin- 
structive to see that gentlemen the most decided 
in anti-democratic views favored an election, in 
some sort, by the people. 

Mr. Gouverneur Morris f said, " He ought to be 
" elected by the people at large, by the freeholders 

* Madison Papers, vol. iii. pp. 1489, 1490. 
t Ibid., vol. ii. p. 1119. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 67 

of the country. ... If the people should elect, 
they will never fail to prefer some man of dis- 
tinguished character, or services; some man, if 
he might so speak, of continental reputation. 
... He moved to strike out ' National Legis- 
'lature,' and insert 'citizens of the United 
'States'." Again,* "it is said the people will 
be led by a few designing men. This might 
happen in a small district. It can never happen 
throughout the continent. It is said the multi- 
tude will be uninformed. It is true they would 
be uninformed of what passed in the legislative 
conclave, if the election were to be made there ; 
but they will not be uninformed of those great 
and illustrious characters which have merited 
their esteem and confidence. . . . Appoint- 
ments made by numerous bodies are always 
worse than those made by single responsible 
individuals or by the people at large." He said, 
on another occasion, " he saw no alternative for 
' making the Executive independent of the Legis- 
' lature, but either to give him his office for life, or 
' make him eligible by the people." Mr. Dickin- 
sonf said he thought that "insuperable objections 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1121, 1122. 
f John Dickinson, delegate from Delaware, author of the 
" Farmer's Letters ;" took an active part in the Revolution ; 



68 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" lay against an election of the Executive by the 
" National Legislature ; as also by the Legislatures 
"or Executives of the States. He had long leaned 
" towards an election by the people, which he re- 
" garded as the purest and best source. Objections 
" he was aware lay against this mode, but not so 
"great, he thought, as against the other modes."* 
Mr. Hamilton^ was in favor of an appointment 
by electors chosen by the people. In the draft 
of a constitution laid before the convention in the 
course of his speech of the 18th of June, his Ex- 
ecutive clause made the "Executive authority of 
" the United States to be vested in a governor, 
"to be elected to serve during good behaviour ; 
" the election to be made by electors chosen by 
" the people in their election districts aforesaid." 
Mr. King, J a friend, personal and political, of Mr. 
Hamilton, " was much disposed to think that in 
" such cases the people at large would choose 
" wisely. . . . On the whole, he was of opinion 
" that an appointment by electors chosen by the 
"people for the purpose would be liable to fewest 
" objections." 

member of the Confederate Congress; and, at different times, 
President of the States of Delaware and Pennsylvania. 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 1206. f Ibid., p. 891. 

J Ibid., pp. 1146, 114t. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 69 



SECTION XIII. 

THEIR VIEWS OF EXECUTIVE TOTVEK, CONCLUDED. 

Thus, after eight times it had been voted down, 
did those very gentlemen the most opposed to 
democracy assist to bring tlie convention to pop- 
ular election of Executive power. Through in- 
herent causes, and the contrivances of politicians, 
and, above all of them, that by which every 
office in the United States depends, on the event 
of the vote for President, it has proved to be the 
heaviest drag on the virtue of the people. De- 
mocracy's worst ills have rushed in through the 
gap opened to make and unmake Presidents. If 
every public functionary were voted for at the 
same election, the President at the head of the 
poll, and the rest following in their order, it would 
not be a severer test of our patriotism than elec- 
tions of the President as we have them. Could 
they have seen, in 1787, what all see now, the 
operation of the system by which democracy, with- 
out abdicating its authority, delegates it to choose 
Presidents, and prepare the ground for their four 
years' administration of the government, they 
might have been tempted to consider the scheme* 

* Mr. Wilson suggested "that the Executive be elected for 
" six years by a small number, not more than fifteen, of the 



70 FEAES FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROJL 

suggested to them of a choice by lot. If it made 
Presidents by lot, democracy could not have di- 
verged more than it has from the qualifications 
and the standard of character for that high office, 
as they were understood in the convention. 

SECTION XIV. 

THE MERITS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION. 

The framers of the constitution, virtuous and ex- 
cellent men, may have been too averse to democ- 
racy, and had too little expectation from it, and 
their posterity too much ; no party spirit possessed 
them, no personal motive; never, unless on the 
one question of the representation of the smaller 
States, did a feeling which could not be com- 
mended, seem to darken their minds. But they 
were fallible, that is certain ; and they were full 
of fear of that great movement which, while they 
are sleeping in their graves, is striding onward. 

Two obstacles — first, that the powers of the dele- 
gations of States did not authorize the making of a 
new constitution, but limited them to amendments 
of that already existing in the Articles of Confeder- 

" National Legislature, to be drawn from it, not by ballot, 
" but by lot, and who should retire imnnediately and make 
"the election without separating." Madison Papers, vol. ii. 
p. 1193; ib., pp. 1208, 1209. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 71 

ation ; and, second, that those Articles had been 
solemnly settled as a frame of government, bind- 
ing forever, until unanimously abrogated by the 
vote of every State, the convention overcame by 
totally disregarding them. They exercised the 
new power, of revolution. Not to surmount these 
obstacles would have been to see tied the hands 
of the people. Without authority to make a new 
government, they made one. Without authority 
to judge the Articles of Confederation, they sat, 
judged and condemned them. They resolved that 
the new constitution go into effect though but nine 
States of the thirteen chose to adopt it ; leaving 
out, it might be, Rhode Island, which had not 
sent delegates to the convention, and three States 
more ; notwithstanding the explicit language of 
the thirteenth Article of Confederation to the 
contrary. 

Thus the convention, so undemocratic in faith, 
was democratic in works, and found access to rule 
and order from the confusion which had prevailed 
since the close of the war, by the wide door of 
democracy. It was an exercise of the right of rev- 
olution,* a right that had made, and now unmade, 

* "At that time," before the organization of the Constitu- 
tion, ''Rhode Island and North Carolina miyht justly have 
" pleaded that their sister States were bound to them by a 



72 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

the Confederacy. The Articles of Confederation 
by the thirteenth article declared that they " shall 
" be inviolably observed by every State, and the 
" Union shall be perpetual ; nor shall any alter- 
" ation, at any time hereafter, be made in any 
'■'■ of 'them, unless such alteration be agreed to in 
" a congress of the United States, and be after- 
" wards confirmed by the Legislature of every 
" State." 

The Lacedaemonian lawgiver went into volun- 
tary banishment lest his people, should change 
the institutions he gave them ; nnd the federal 
convention made it difficult to alter theirs. To 
propose an amendment they required a vote of 
two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, or of two- 

" compact, into which they bad voluntarily entered, with 
" stipulations that it should undergo no such alteration but 
"by unanimous consent. That the Constitution was a Con- 
" federate Union founded upon principles totally different, 
" and to which not only they were at liberty to refuse their 
"assent, but which all the other States combined could not, 
" without a breach of their own faith, establish among them- 
" selves without the free consent of all the partners to the 
" prior contract. . . . They passed upon the old Confedera- 
" tion the same sentence which they had pronounced in dis- 
" solving their connection with the British nation." Dis- 
course of John Quincy Adams before the Historical Society 
of New York, 30th April, 1839, pp. 64, 65. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 73' 

thirds of the States ; to carry an amendment, the 
votes of three-fourths of the States. Since 1787, a 
Bill of Rights has been added to the Constitution ; 
a clause construing the clause touching suits against 
a State ; and a clause to prevent repetition of the 
attempt made, in the House of Representatives, at 
the Presidential election of the year 1800. Though 
in the form of amendments, they cannot be called 
changes. They were but the Constitution as in- 
tended by its framers. Of the recent changes, 
since the war, not less can be said than that they 
were the work of violence.* 

Let it be the praise of the framers of the Fed- 
eral government that, though they gave nothing, 
if we abuse their gifts; and gave in fear, it is a 
government under which we have lived nearly a 
century without one important provision of it, to 
this time, discovered, for which another convention 
would be sure to find a better ; and with only one 
omission, namely, of a provision for the policy of 
creating new States on newly acquired territory, 
which another convention might deem it indisjDcn- 
sable to supply. Limited beings that we are, this 
assembly, which did their work so well that expe- 
rience points to no flaw in it, had to be compelled 
to their task by the ignorant many ; that very de- 

* See infra. 
G 



74 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

mocracy which they despised. Mr. Madison, when 
the Constitution was before the country for consid- 
eration, said,* " there can be no doubt that there 
" are subjects to which the capacities of the bulk of 
" mankind are unequal, and on which they must 
" and will be governed by those with whom they 
"happen to have acquaintance and confidence. 
" The proposed Constitution is of this description. 
" The great body of those who are both for and 
"against it must follow the judgment of others, 
"not their own." Mr. Madison said sooth;, but 
there are subjects more vast than constitutions; 
" subjects" to which the " bulk of mankind" alone 
are equal. Great movements must be the work 
of society itself We owe the democratic idea to 
the people. If they had not produced democracy 
before they called a convention, very different 
would have been our institutions. To the duty 
committed to those statesmen they were equal ; 
and they were beyond all thought of comparison 
more capable than any men who have served us 
since. To the accomplishment of their task went 
not only that zeal, integrity, and ability which 
their cotemporaries and posterity have united to 
applaud, but good fortune too. The framers of 

* Letter to Edmund Randolph, January 10, 1788: Madi- 
son Papers, vol. ii. p. 663. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 75 

the Constitution had the good fortune to serve a 
new country, a people who were still in the days 
of their freshness and youth ; full of hope, un- 
broken by age. 

Despite their merits, and the merits of their con- 
stituents, it may be asserted, how great soever the 
temptation of the States to rid themselves of the 
confusion that prevailed, by reason of the incom- 
petency of confederate power, unable to raise rev- 
enue, unable to regulate trade, too weak to cope 
with foreign nations, especially England, whose 
unfriendliness threatened to reach the point of a 
renewal of hostilities, that this Constitution was 
adopted, not so much in the hope of contentment 
under the new government, as compelled by fear 
of remaining longer under the old. Had the pro- 
posal prevailed which was urged in the conven- 
tion, to refer the draft of what they called their 
plan to the ordeal of a consideration in Congress''' 
as well as by the States; or had the course of 

* It was voted expressly by the convention, against the 
opinions of- Mr. Hamilton and others, not to submit the 
Constitution to the "approbation" of Congress. (Madison 
Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1468-76, and 1536-41.) It was "laid 
"before Congress," with the opinion of the convention that 
it should be " submitted to a convention of delegates choseu 
"in each Slate by the people thereof, under the recommenda- 
"tiou of its Legislature, for their assent and ratification." 



76 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

events chanced to oppose to its ratification more 
delay than actually took place ; had the Constitu- 
tion not been speedily agreed to ; had a second 
convention been called, as proposed; the oppor- 
tunity would have been lost, the consent of the 
necessary number of States would not have been 
obtained, we would have drifted in uncertainty, 
our destinies would not have been fixed or our 
political fortunes settled in 1789. Faction would 
have ended in an appeal to the sword. Civil war 
would have found us, seventy years sooner than it 
did, with arms in our hands, turned against one 
another. 

This great step made in 1787 was, in every 
sense, tentative : democracy was an experiment ; 
the Union* was an experiment; the Constitution 

* Witness Mr. Jeiferson: "I still hope the French Revolu- 
" tion will issue happily. I feel that the permanence of our 
" own leans in some degree on that, and that a failure there 
'' would be a powerful argument to prove there must be a 
"failure here." (Letter to Mr. Rutledge, August 25, 1*791 : 
Jefferson's Works, vol. iii. pp. 285, 286.) " I have been among 
" the most sanguine in believing that our Union would be 
" of long duration. I now doubt it much, and see the event 
" at no great distance." (Letter to William Short, April 13, 
1820: Jefferson's Works, vol. vii. p. 158.) The nature of 
his genius made novelty, change, and experiment less alarm- 
in": to Mr. Jefferson than to other men. See his letter about 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 77 

was an experiment; and it was an experiment 
that of persuading the States to accede to it. For 
the first time, men gave themselves a government; 
and they did it reluctantly ; they had their State 
o-overnments, and hesitated to take another. The 
sixth President of the United States, Mr. John 
Quincy Adams, said the adoption of the federal 
Constitution was '-extorted from the grinding 
"necessity of a reluctant nation."* Several of 
the delegates to the federal convention refused their 
names to it. A majority of the New York delegates 
at an early period of the session had retired. 
Rhode Island declined to send a delegation, and 
afterwards to call a State convention to consider 
the draft. The State convention of North Caro- 
lina rejected it. In Virginia it was accepted by 

drawbacks, to Mr. Crawford, of June 20, 1816, Jefferson's 
Works, vol. vii. p. 7. "You have fairly stated the alterna- 
"tives between which we are to choose: 1. Licentious coni- 
" raerce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal 
" war for the many ; or, 2. Restricted commerce, peace, and 
" steady occupations for all. If any State in the Union will 
" declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative, 
" to a continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation 
" in saying, ' let us separate.' " Only a genius for which 
experiment had no terrors could say so. 

* " The Jubilee of the Constitution ; a Discourse," etc., 
by John Quincy Adams, ut supra. 



/O FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

a vote of eighty-nine against seventy-nine ; in 
Massachusetts, by one hundred and eighty-seven 
against one hundred and sixty-eight ; and in New 
York, after, in effect, it had been rejected, it was 
accepted by a majority of a single vote. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 79 



CHAPTER III. 

DEMOCRACY AN EXPERIMENT. 
SECTION I. 

ALL THE FEDERAL CONVENTION COULD DO WAS TO EXPERIMENT ON 
THE GOOD BEHAVIOUR OF THE PEOPLE. 

The Constitution of the United States, in the 
form we have it, so reluctantly yielded, so hesi- 
tatingly accepted, after all, is nothing but an 
experiment of the virtue of the people. That 
blessing of liberty, which the world is hurrying 
after, is in no government or form of government ; 
it is in the people ; it depends on themselves. Much 
was said in the convention, and much has been said 
since, of a ''strong government" for the United 
States. The government of the United States 
never was so strong as from 1860 to 1864. It had 
more than all the strength that was ever thought 
of for it; an immense army, unlimited revenue, 
liberty suspended; yet, with all these powers in 
use, it lived on the popular breath, and could not 
have survived the loss of it for a month. A 
citizen of the United States, with the advantage 



80 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

over Plato of a people with twenty-three hundred 
years' more experience than his, should he imagine 
a perfect commonwealth, would lay his founda- 
tions not as that philosopher did. To make a 
perfect commonwealth, he must begin with a per- 
fect people. Either is impossible. But the com- 
monwealth of the modern Plato must depend on 
the people. Not the people in the sense of those 
who hate them, not the mob, but society, the 
whole body and frame of things, industry, wealth, 
art, genius, learning; the wit of man in all its 
forms. 

SECTION II. 

WHY THE EXPERIMENT OUGHT TO SXJCCEED. 

If the people are, at best, but a mob, or too 
much occupied with their own affairs to think of 
those of the public, free governments and constitu- 
tions are in vain. If nothing; can be rested on the 
people, and it would, as Mr. Gouverneur Morris 
said, be as vain to expect permanency from them 
" as to construct a palace on the surface of the sea,'' 
we must despair. 

It would be delusion to fancy that society, un- 
aided, can govern itself, but it is no delusion to 
believe that society is to have more influence 
than in former days, and government less ; that 
the society of Russia is less capable of support to a 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 81 

government than the society of Switzerland, where 
of the twenty-four members of the Confederate 
Republic seven are pure democracies, the people 
ruling, not by their representatives, but in general 
assemblies of the citizens. Should society ever 
reach that point of fancied perfection which brings 
to each citizen his fair average of happiness, gov- 
ernment will be reduced to a shadow. 

Improvement is the improvement of society. 
Riches, invention, discovery, the compass, the art 
of printing, have improved society. What are the 
improvements of government ? There are none ; 
none that have been accepted by the nations 
of the earth as improvements, the representative 
system, only, excepted ; a discovery which, in 
statecraft, corresponds with that of the compass in 
science. If that great movement which pervades 
the world, and acquires force daily, means no more 
than to better governments, it means nothing. It 
must mean to better the people. A despotic gov- 
ernment may be good ; a republican government 
may be bad. 

The people may be a disappointment, but the 
day is past when they were not to be counted ; 
when Frederick the Great said that happiness and 
prosperity depended on the discipline of the army ; 
and even Adam Smith said that "civil govern- 



82 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

"ment, so far as it is instituted for the security of 
" property, is in reality instituted for the defence 
" of the rich against the poor, or of those who 
"have some property against those who have none 
" at alh" Neither the Scotch philosopher nor 
the German king had imagined democracy. This 
movement, of which so many say they see not 
what it is to come to, can any of them say what 
is to stop it ? The world gravitates to plurality. 
There used to be one church of Apostolic founda- 
tion and uniform belief; there are now hundreds. 

It is not to the wisdom of their rulers that men 
are indebted for their prosperity. It is a source 
at once of pride and melancholy to reflect how 
little we owe to them, in this republic. We have 
chosen Chief Magistrates twenty-two times, and 
found but one man who could be trusted in the 
dark. It is society, the people, through advancing 
civilization, who scatter the seeds of liberty. So- 
ciety seeks its health by the same providence that 
teaches the plant to seek the light. It does not 
seek its destruction. Like the human body, it is a 
machine with vices, but it is meant to live. If 
Mr. Jefferson, with his ideas, which were those of 
public purity and virtue, could have a glimpse of 
our condition to-day, he would despair; but that 
is because he had formed, with all his enthusiasm 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 83 

for democracy, no adequate conception of the self- 
sustaining power of society. He thought that the 
question of self-government depended on the vir- 
tue of the people ; and so it does, but it is the 
virtue of strength. Virtue in his sense is only a 
part of it. Washington had this advantage over 
all who have succeeded him ; he let the country 
find its own way. It was his largeness of soul ; 
his achieved greatness, an advantage he had over 
statesmen and politicians with characters to make, 
and impatient to begin to make them. There has 
not been one administration of the government of 
the United States which took on itself the initia- 
tive, without mischief. A man may be a states- 
man of a high order, and not discover what is best 
for his country ; but the country is sure to discover 
it. Washington said the people had to feel l>efore 
they see ; which is perfectly true ; and the con- 
sequence is that it is long before they are roused 
to their condition ; in that, unlike a single great 
mind, which seizes instantly the situation. But 
the people last for centuries, and can mature their 
schemes, and they command resources to carry 
them through. Russia has been an empire ruled 
by ambitious monarchs, controlled by able minis- 
ters. Since their career began as a European power, 
which was about the time of the settlement of 



84 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

these colonies, they have of neighbouring nations 
overturned several and alarmed all; but could 
Russia have expanded into freedom, and had no 
Peters and Catherines, they would to-day, instead 
of being a barbarous empire with a civilized court, 
be a civilized people. Without Louis the Four- 
teenth, there might have been no palaces and 
gardens of Versailles, and the identical artists and 
authors whom he encouraged and rewarded might 
not have produced their works ; but such govern- 
ments, though they may not, like his, end in great 
reverses, only throw back a nation. What is a 
man closeted with his minister, to the activity of 
a whole people ? 

Governments contrive, but no government ever 
was known whose schemes and specialties were 
as reliable as the instincts of individuals. The 
progress of civilization may be traced in transfers, 
to individuals, of cares and franchises of which 
governments once had the monopoly. There is 
hardly a limit to this capacity of society for the 
performance of duties which we are taught to con- 
sider are proper only to government. Where the 
power of competition can be brought to bear, there 
is no power to compare with it. That the people 
trespass on the province of government is held up 
as an evidence of American imperfection ; but no, 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 85 

we fire to be regarded, therefore, as the more per- 
fect society. If the multitudes of franchises of 
industrial and other enterprises, for the protection 
and well-being of the community, could be reck- 
oned, in yielding which the States of the American 
Union have stepped aside from a public function 
to subrogate individuals to carry it on, we would 
easily perceive what a vast proportion of the offices 
of government are now performed by the people, 
and well performed. See how despotically governed 
countries lag behind those that are free, for want 
of confidence in the safety of labour and capital 
invested in public objects ! 

Of the English East India Company, a few mer- 
chants, it was said by one of the first of writers 
and thinkers, by whom the operations of that 
company were, withal, severely criticised as a 
nuisance and monopoly, injurious to the freedom 
of trade,* " In wars and negotiation the councils 
" of Madras and Calcutta have upon several occa- 
" sions conducted themselves with a resolution and 
" decisive wisdom which would have done honour 
" to the Senate of Rome in the best days of that 
" Republic." There is scarce a duty of government, 
in tliis or any other country, that is not abused ; 
many, to the point of being nothing but abuses; 

* Wealth of Nations, vol. ii. p. 484, 7th cd.. Lend., 1793. 



86 FEAES FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

while of those which, in a free country, are in the 
hands of individuals, few are only abused, most 
are reasonably well performed, and many so \\^ell 
as to be open to no censure. 

If from the people of the United States were 
withdrawn, at the same moment, the Federal and 
State establishments, with all their appliances and 
means of compulsion, and we were left with no 
governments at all, ruin would not ensue ; the 
best portions of society would appear, and the 
worst, those who now are uppermost, politically, 
would disappear, exactly as in Europe the worst 
would appear and the best disappear; and public 
affairs proceed, until new establishments could be 
formed. This would be the people. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 87 



CHAPTER IV. 

DEMOCRACY UNDER THE NEW GOVERNMENT. 
SEC^TION I. 

OPPOSITIOX TO DEMOCRACY. 

The same class of statesmen who framed the 
Constitution, their fears of democracy in no wise 
abated, filled the new government, and led what 
is known as the old fejjeralparty, then com- 
prising a due portion of the patriotism, and the 
greater portion of the educated intelligence, of 
the country. Their effort was to resist the pre- '^( 

vailing current; if not to stifle, to prevent, at 
least, the expansion of the democratic principle; 
an effort, of which, not by its success, for tliat 
was impossible, but through the mischief and con- 
fusion of the attempt, the consequences might 
have been serious; for it is a serious misfortune 
when the government is at variance with the 
creed of its people. 

At the head of the new Executive, by unani- 
mous voice, was Washington, a man lofty in 
his nature, regarding, perhaps, the scheme of 



88 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

democracy as doubtful ; but having in him, with 
a combination of qualities that grow, from age to 
age, in the admiration of mankind, that wisdom 
of virtue and clearness of mind which taught 
him, whatever his ascendant, not to use it to dis- 
turb the irrevocable policy of a free people. He 
was not one of those intelligences described as 
men ahead of their age; but he was far above it; 
and he made an impression on the world of which 
mere intelligence, however great, is not capable. 
History does not inquire how subtle the genius of 
Cato was ; he filled the world ; and so did Wash- 
ington. Cato's death at Utica made less sensation 
than Washington's on his Virginia farm, and the 
Roman occupies less space to-day than the Amer- 
ican will two thousand years hence. It is not 
easy to see how the country could have sur- 
mounted so many obstacles, and so soon have 
got its new direction, without him. 

The papers, including those of the most inti- 
mate nature, of prominent men of the end of the 
last century, now published, make too plain for 
posterity to doubt the views and purpose of the 
federal gentlemen of that period. That purpose, 
better understood by us than by their cotempo- 
raries, was, by infusing a high degree of energy 
into the measures, movements, and action of the 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 89 

central government, to expel from it as much as 
could be thrown off, of the democratic principle. 
It had found its way into the Constitution, could 
it be rejected ? When, after the revolution had 
gained head in France, Marie Antoinette, at one 
of her interviews with Barnave, asked him, in 
female terror, what she was to do : Madam, was 
the answer, yoit muM love the 2)eople. And what, 
said her majesty, does that mean ? Bonne foi, was 
the significant reply of the Girondist. The old 
federal party counted in their ranks much of the 
integrity and, in their day, most of the ability of 
the country ; but they did not love the people. 
Their measures they may have thought wisely 
taken, but it was not honne foi which inspired 
them. The inliuence of democracy was to be con- 
tracted, the authority of the States to be limited, 
the capacity of the government to be enlarged ; 
the federal constitution, which had been, in 
1787-8, held up in the State conventions and a 
multitude of publications, especially the papers of 
The Federalist, as sufficing to all its ends, was to 
be fortified at the expense of the rights reserved 
to the States, and the perfectness of the common 
liberty. 

Posterity, should democracy prove a failure, 
may justify the federal chiefs, but, sceptics as 



90 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

they were, in what with the people was a religion, 
and their construction of the Constitution an after- 
thought, they neither could have, nor did they 
deserve, popular sympathy. Their doctrine, a de- 
nial of popular virtue, and a contradiction of the 
whole spirit of the country, was neither tenable 
at the polls, nor warranted by that candour which 
not even in party politics may be despised with 
impunity. It was based upon the idea, so dis- 
couraging to democratic hopes, that the people 
should receive the impulse, not give it. 

SECTION II. 

THE FORMATION OF PARTIES. 

Much ingenious research has been expended 
on the origin of parties in the United States ; 
whether they dated before the Revolution, or 
with it, or sprang, afterwards, out of opposition 
to the federal Constitution ; or from the feeling 
roused by the French Revolution ; or whether 
they had their birth in the personal ambitions 
of Jefferson and Hamilton, and the measures by 
those statesmen, respectively, advocated. But let 
us strip ourselves of prejudice, and confess they 
had a remoter origin, a broader sense, deep-seated 
in the human breast; the love of liberty in some, 
and the corresponding fear of it in others ; a love 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 91 

or fear common to all, and of which every man 
partakes. Hence did our political differences 
arise ; it was the struggle of the many against the 
control ofthe few. To understand the failure of 
the party led by Mr. Hamilton, it is not necessary 
to investigate their measures. It was enough that 
they distrusted the people. That party, when 
they lost power, in 1800, ought, like other parties, 
to have recovered it again, but it was impossible; 
once fallen, the federalists could rise no more. 
They wanted more than the Constitution, when 
less would have satisfied the country. 

It was the lot of democracy to bear odiums not 
its own. The government of the United States 
was inaugurated with the opening of the first 
session of the Congress of the Union, held in New J 

York, the 4th of March, 1789. Sixty-one days 
after, the 4th of May, 1789, the French Revolu- 
tion, whose democracy was noble in its aspirations, 
but not instructed by time, inaugurated itself 
with the opening of the States-General at Ver- 
sailles. Nowhere was French democracy encoun- 
tered with bitterer and more persistent animosity 
than by the orators and writers, rich or well paid, 
of the aristocracy of England. Nowhere did their 
efforts more avail to cool the enthusiasm for lib- 
erty, and exalt the apprehensions of democracy, 



92 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

than in the United States, where the identity of 
blood and language helped the fiercest of British 
diatribes to attentive listeners, and where impres- 
sions were made which, aided by the liorrors 
that ensued in France, have proved enduring. 
They are upon us to this day, and democracy is 
a name and an idea, in many minds, associated, 
as it was a hundred years ago, with the igno- 
rance and crimes of the lowest rabble. When 
France and England engaged in a furious war, 
arising out of the change in France from mon- 
archical to popular government, our deep obliga- 
tions to France, and our inherited sympathy with 
England, embarrassed and confused, withal, as, on 
every side, we were, by the insults and injuries 
heaped on us, in their madness, by both belliger- 
ents, produced a feeling so eccentric that politics 
seemed, though led by men of the first order, to 
have the w^eakness of copies. They depended less 
on their intrinsic merits than on preferences and 
aversions for foreign nations-. Washington, in his 
letter to Patrick Henry, of October, 1795, tender- 
ing him the department of State, and setting forth 
the qualities he desired to find in the head of his 
Cabinet, points to this : " I want," he said, " an 
" American character, that the powers of Europe 
" may be convinced we act for ourselves, and not 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 93 

" for others. This, in my judgment, is the only 
" way to be respected abroad and happy at home, 
" and not, by becoming the partisans of Great 
" Britain and France, create dissensions, disturb 
" public tranquillity, and destroy, perhaps forever, 
" the cement which binds the Union." He de- 
scribed a man like himself, and not to be found. 

SECTION III. 

MONARCHICAL TENDENCIES. 

To the reproach so often cast upon the party 
calling itself democratic, which came into power 
upon the federal defeat in 1800, that they found 
little to change in a government they had so 
heavily condemned, the best answer, certainly the 
most candid, is, that it was rather a terror of 
federal doctrine, than anything that had been 
accomplished by that party, which roused the 
people of the United States to blast, once for all, 
the political fortunes of men who had framed 
their Constitution, and had so large a share in 
bearing them through the Revolution. There was 
a mutual terror. Among the federal leaders it 
was a terror of the mob ; among the people at 
large, a terror of monarchy. Each thought a 
monster was to be loosed on them. 

Led by Mr. Jefferson, a gentleman by birth and 



94 FEARS FOE DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

habits, American democracy was as disgusting 
to the federalists as the cotemporary offspring of 
the Marats and Robespierres ; differing from it, 
as they believed, for the hour only, to come at 
last, by the same means, to the same end. There 
does not seem to have been one man of the old 
federal party, whose correspondence has come 
down to us, whose fears of democracy were not 
of the most exaggerated sort.* But not so much 
did the federal dislike of the masses smooth the 
way of Mr. Jefferson to their hearts, and, after 
him, to a long democratic possession of Executive 
power, as the belief and persuasion of the masses 
that monarchy, if not contemplated, was coveted 
by the federalists, and thought by them to be 
the natural and necessary end of the democratic 
experiment. 

The citizen of the United States, of the present 
day, though the feeling of repulsion to democracy 
is anything but extinct, must wonder at the ideas 

* See the letters of the correspondeuts of Washington, 
Jay, Gouverneur Morris, Wolcott, Adams, Franklin, Iredell, 
and, above all, Jefferson and Hamilton, passim. The gossip 
about Hamilton and his friends which, in his Ana, Mr. Jef- 
ferson has recorded, and commended to posterity, and the 
anonymous newspaper attacks of Hamilton upon Jefferson, 
when they were sitting together in Washington's councils, 
show the extravagances of the day. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 95 

of eighty years ago. " The thing," said'"' Mr. 
Gouverneur Morris, just before the election of 
Mr. Jefferson, " which, in my opinion, has done 
" most mischief to the federal party, is the ground 
"given by some of them to believe that they wish 
"' to establish a monarch." Mr. Hamilton said,f 
" The jealousy of monarchy, which is as actual 
" as ever, still furnishes a handle by which the 
" factious mislead well-meaning persons." How 
could men who loved their country so well as 
these two men did, fail to do justice to its fears? 
It would have been marvellous, with as strong a 
bias as so many of them had, if their party did 
not transgress ; and it would have been still more 
marvellous if the people did not fear it, 

To call these gentlemen monarchists, when 
there was not one of them who would have at- 
tempted to set up a monarchy, is unjust. What 
can be justly said is that they did not see the 
way to democracy. But party degenerates to 
bigotry, and in the United States we have the 
intolerances in politics, that in other countries 
they have in religion. It is common to say of Mr. 

* Letter from Gouverneur Morris to Rufus King, June 4, 
1800: Sparks's Life of Morris, vol. iii. p. 128. 

■f" Letter from Hamilton to Rufus King, January 5, 1800: 
Hamilton's Works, vol. vi. p. 415. 



96 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

Hamilton that he was a monarchist; and if he was, 
the more honour to him that he zealously served 
the republic. But it is not common to recognize 
the fact that Hamilton's opinions were far from 
being singular, and that among leading federalists 
of that day there was more doubt of republican 
than of monarchical government. Mr. Jefferson's 
memorandums of conversations, and anecdotes, not 
always authentic, which are the least creditable 
to his head and heart of all that he left behind 
him, the professed object of which was to perpet- 
uate the evidence of the inclinations of his party 
rivals, might have been spared, had he known 
posterity was to see those gentlemen in the sure 
and clear light of their familiar correspondence. 
The evidence thence derived is authentic and ir- 
resistible. 

From an officer of the army, representing, it 
was believed, other officers, had come to Washing- 
ton, the year before the close of the war, and prior 
in date to what are called the Newburgh Papers, 
an overture to make him a king.* Among Ham- 
ilton's papers may be seen the correspondence 
between him and Governor Clinton, in the year 

* Sparks's Washington, vol. viii. pp. 800, 301, and note. 
See the Newburgh Papers, Sparks's Washington, vol. viii. 
pp. 392-406, and Appendix, pp. 551-556. 



THE AMERICAN TOINT OF VIEW. 97 

1804, touching an imputed scheme, alleged to go 
so far as to propose one of the English reigning 
family for the American monarch, with other pro- 
visions for a royal establishment, including a per- 
petual alliance between the two countries, offensive 
and defensive, Canada being transferred to us, and 
a portion of the British navy/^ Hamilton's purpose 
in addressing Clinton was to discover the parties 
who, as he believed, had charged him with being 
accessory to this project; a charge which he de- 
nounced, and, no doubt, most truly, as " a very 
" odious slander ;" but it was supposed to be worth 
contradiction. Washington says to Mr. Madison,f 
in a letter of the 31st of March, 1787, "I am 
"fully of opinion that those who lean to a mon- 
"archical government have either not consulted 
"the public mind, or that they live in a region 
" which (the levelling principles in which they 
" were bred being entirely eradicated) is much 
" more productive of monarchical ideas, than is 
" the case in the Southern States, where, from 
" the habitual distinctions which have always 
" existed among the people, one would have ex- 
" pected the first generation and the most rapid 
" growth of them. I am also clear that, even 

* Hamilton's Works, vol. vi. pp. 561-565. 
f Sparks's Washington, vol. ix. pp. 247, 248. 



98 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACT REGARDED FROM 

" admitting the utility, nay, necessity, of the 
" form, the period is not arrived for adopting 
" the change without shaking the peace of this 
" country to its foundation." Within the same 
eventful twelvemonth, the country then ripen- 
ing to a Constitutional convention, he wrote 
to Mr. Jay,* " What astonishing changes a few 
" years are capable of producing ! I am told even 
" respectable characters speak of a monarchical 
" form of government without horror. From 
" thinking proceeds speaking ; thence to acting 
" is often but a single step. But how irrevo- 
" cable and tremendous ! What a triumph of our 
"• enemies to verify their predictions ! What a 
" triumph for the advocates of despotism to find 
" that we are incapable of governing ourselves, 
" and that systems founded on the basis of equal 
" liberty are merely ideal and fallacious ! Would 
" to God that wise measures may be taken in 
" time to avert the consequences w^e have but 
"too much reason to apprehend."-}- On the 7th 

* John Jay, President of the Confederate Congress ; min- 
ister to Spain ; one of the Commissioners to negotiate the 
peace of Independence, at Paris ; Secretary for Foreign Af- 
fairs ; Governor of New York; under the Constitution, 
Chief Justice of the United States, and minister to England. 

f Letter, August 1, 1186: Sparks's Washington, vol., ix. 
p. 187. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 99 

of January, 1787, about four months before the 
meeting of the convention, Mr. Jay''' writes to 
Washington, " Shall we have a king ? Not in my 
" opinion, while other expedients remain untried." 
In the convention, Mr. Madison, looking to even 
the possibility of popular acceptance of monar- 
chical institutions, said, " he conceived it to be 
'•of great importance that a stable and firm 
"government, organized in the republican form, 
"should be held out to the people. If this be 
"not done, and the people be left to judge of this 
" species of government by the operations of the 
" defective systems under which they now live, it 
"is much to be feared the time is not distant, 
"when, in universal disgust, they will renounce 
" the blessing which they have purchased at so 
"dear a rate, and be ready for any change that 
"may be proposed to them."t Mr. Dickinson, 
so ardent a patriot that, at an early period of the 
war, when he had lost his seat in Congress, he 
shouldered a musket and served in the- ranks as 
a common soldier, said, in debating, in the con- 
vention, the Executive question, " a limited mon- 

* Letter, January 1, IISI : Sparkste Washington, vol. ix. 
p. 511, Appendix; Life and Writings of John Jay, by his 
son, William Jay, vol. i. p. 256. 

t Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 853. 



100 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" archy he considered as one of the best govern- 
" ments in the world. It was not certain that 
"the same blessings were derivable from any 
"other form. It was certain that equal blessings 
" had never yet been derived from any of the 
" republican forms. A limited monarchy, however, 
" was out of the question ; the spirit of the times, 
" the state of our affairs, forbade the experiment, 
"if it were desirable."* Mr. Gerry, elected, by 
the democratic party, Governor of Massachusetts, 
in 1810, and afterwards elected, on the ticket with 
Mr. Madison, Vice-President of the United States, 
said,f "Perhaps a limited monarchy would be the 
" best government, if we could organize it by cre- 
" ating a House of Peers ; but that cannot be 
"done." A quarter of a century later, Mr. Gou- 
verneur Morris wrote, J " Those who formed our 
" Constitution were not blind to its defects. They 
" believed a monarchical form to be neither solid 
" nor durable. . . . 

" Fond, however, as the framers of our National 
" Constitution were of republican government, 
" they were not so much blinded by their attach- 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 7t8. 

t Yates's Minutes, June 12, 1787 ; Elliott, vol. i. p. 408. 
J Letter from Gouverneur Morris to Robert Walsh, Feb- 
ruary 5, 1811 : Sparks's Morris, vol. iii. pp. 262, 263. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 101 

" ment, as not to discern the difficulty, perhaps 
" infpracticability, of raising a durable edifice from 
" crumbling materials. History, the parent of po- 
" litical science, had told them, that it was almost 
" as vain to expect permanency from democracy, 
" as to construct a palace on the surface of the 
" sea. But it would have been foolish to fold 
" their arms and sink into despondency because 
" they could neither form nor establish the best 
" of all possible systems." 

It was Hamilton's opinion, in 1787, that, should 
the Federal Constitution not be adopted, " a dis- 
" memberment of the Union, and monarchies in 
" different portions of it, may be expected.'"^ Mar- 
shall, in his Life of Washington, intimates that 
the opposition to the convention, partly, arose 
from the designs of those who, desiring mon- 
archy, believed there was no so sure road to it 
as the " road to misery ;" and opposed the call for 
a convention, thinking that " times must be worse 
•"before they could be better,"-]- and they might 
gather royal fruit from the public wretchedness. 
The views of Hamilton, the federal chief, without 

* " Impressions as to the Xew Constitution :" Hamilton's 
Works, vol. ii. p. 621. 

f Marshall's Life of Washington, vol. v. pp. 109, 110, chap. 
ii. 



102 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

rival or competitor, from the rise of that party 
to his untimely death, we have from the most 
friendly pen that could have recorded them ; and 
in some detail. " General Hamilton had little 
'share in forming the Constitution. He disliked 
' it, believing all republican government to be 
' radically defective. . . . He hated republican 
' government, because he confounded it with 
' democratical government, and he detested the 
' latter, because he believed it must end in des- 
' potism, and be, in the mean time, destructive 
• to public morality. . . . He heartily assented, 
' nevertheless, to the Constitution, because he 
^ considered it as a band, which might hold us 
'together for some time, and he knew that 
'national sentiment is the oJBTspring of national 
'existence. He trusted, moreover, that in the 
' changes and chances of time, we should be 
' involved in some war, which might strengthen 
'our Union and nerve the Executive. ... He 
' never failed on every occasion to advocate 
' the excellence of, and avow his attachment to, 
' monarchical government." * 

* Sparks's Grouverneur Morris, vol. iii. p. 260 : Letter to 
Robert Walsh, February 5, 1811. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 103 



SECTION IV. 

HAMILTON. 



With the unbounded attachment of his fol- 
lowers, Hamilton, whose fame sustains itself with 
posterit3% had, as a leader, the inexpiable fault 
of distrust in all he did. What trust could he 
l^ut in an effort to prop what he deemed a false 
system ? It is melancholy to see him give way, 
at last, to the despondent conviction of the ruin- 
ous disadvantage of his position as a supporter 
of institutions Avhich he absolutely distrusted. 
"Mine," he writes in 1802, ''is an odd destiny. 
" Perhaps no man in the United States has sacri- 
"ficed or done more for the present Constitution 
"than myself; and, contrary to all my anticipa- 
" tions of its fate, as you know from the very 
" beginning, I am still laboring to prop the frail 
" and worthless fabric. Yet I have the murmurs 
" of its friends no less than the curses of its foes 
"for my reward. What can I do better than 
" withdraw from the scene ? Every day proves 
" to me more and more that this American world 
"was not made for me."* 

* Hamilton's Works, vol. vi. p. 530 : Letter to Gouver- 
neur Morris, February 27, 1802. 



104 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

That Hamilton looked, in his more hopeful 
days, to the federalists being able to overcome, 
in administering it, what he deemed the defects 
of the government, appears in his " Impressions of 
"the New Constitution," dated in 1787; he says,* 
" A reunion with Great Britain, from universal 
" disgust at a state of commotion, is not impos- 
" sible, though not much to be feared. The most 
" plausible shape of such a business would be the 
" establishment of a son of the present monarch in 
" the supreme government of this country, with 
" a family compact." . . . "A good administra- 
"tion will conciliate the confidence and affection 
"of the people, and perhaps enable the govern- 
" ment to acquire more consistency than the pro- 
" posed Constitution seems to promise for so great 
" a country. It may then triumph altogether 
" over the State governments, and reduce them 
" to an entire subordination, dividing the larger 
" States into smaller districts. The organs of the 
" general government may also acquire additional 
" strength." 

Another fault of Hamilton, and which would not 
have been found in Jay or Marshall had they led 
the federalists, he shared with eminent statesmen 
of all times ; but than which none can be of more 

* Hamilton's Works, vol. ii. p. 421. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 105 

hindrance to the American politician, who needs 
must look to the favour of the people. It was 
the propensity to intrigue. The so-called Miranda 
expedition was a desperate intrigue ; equally dan- 
gerous whether it failed or succeeded, and de- 
structive to the independent existence of the 
United States. His proposal to Mr. Jay, then 
Governor of New York, after the issue of their 
elections, in 1800, had insured the Presidential 
vote of the State to Mr. Jefferson, to call together 
the Legislature, which, though superseded by that 
just elected, had still constitutional life, to meet 
in extraordinary session, and change the mode of 
choosing electors, from choice by the Legislature to 
that by popular districts, thus dividing the New 
York vote, and taking part of it from Jefferson, 
was a temptation to the virtue of Mr. Jay that 
was sternly rejected.* His other project, of the 
same year, which met no more success, though 
supported with a degree of laborious contrivance 
that was truly astonishing, including the marvel- 
lous mistake of his letter of crimination of the 

* See Hamilton's letter to Jay : Hamilton's Works, vol. 
vi. pp. 438-440. " On this letter is the following endorse- 
" ment in the Governor's hand: 'Proposing a measure for 
" ' party purposes, which I think it would not become me to 
" ' adopt.' " Life of Jay, vol. i. p. 414. 



106 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

federal candidate, to defeat, at the same blow, both 
Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson, and make the peo- 
ple, without meaning it, or knowing it, elect Mr. 
Pinckney President, who was the candidate for 
Vice-President, is a blot on a name which none 
ought to desire to see blemished.* 

These were the irregularities of political dis- 
content. It was not the funding system, or the 
French war, which gave triumph to the people. 
It was the just fears they entertained of men who 
hated their principles. 

SECTION V. 

WASHINGTON. 

When we turn to the disputes that shook the 
country between the opposing counsels of Mr. 
Jefferson and Mr. Hamilton, the conduct of Wash- 
ington calming the dissensions seems the wisdom 
of a God. In truth, it was that of a man im- 
measurably their superior. " I believe the views 
"of both of you to be pure and well meant, and 
" that experience only will decide with respect 

* See Hamilton's Works, vols. vi. and vii. ; History of the 
Republic, by John C. Hamilton ; Memoirs of the Adminis- 
trations of Washington and John Adams, edited from the 
papers of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, by 
George Gibbs. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 107 

"to the salutariness of the measures which are 
"the subjects of dispute."* It was that greatness 
which rises above the passions of men. 

It is not common to find the opinions of any 
man incapable of distortion, and the attempt has 
been to distort, to party service, the opinions of 
Washington. Of Jefferson and Hamilton it may 
be said, not disparagingly, that they were party 
men ; in the same sense in which the same thins 
may be said of other great public servants and 
benefactors, in any country. But Washington was 
a man of a different order ; in the amplest sense 
out of reach of the prejudices of party, he uni- 
formly discouraged, disliked, and dem^ it. He 
was a man, if ever there was one, who may be 
counted always to mean as much as he said ; and 
most emphatically did he declare his apprehen- 
sions of party ; witness the Farewell Address. He 
said in 1795,f he was "one who is of no party, 
" and his sole wish is to pursue with undeviating 
"steps a path which would lead this country to 
" respectability, wealth, and happiness." The per- 
sons Washington had about him, during his last 

* Letter to Jefferson, October 18, 1792 : Sparks's Washing- 
ton, vol. X. p. 30fi. 

t Letter to Mr. Pickering, July 27, 1795: Sparks's Wash- 
ington, vol. xi. p. 40. 



108 FEAES FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

term of administering the government, were gen- 
erally federalists; contrary to his strong desire. 
When Mr. Jefferson's place was filled by Mr, Pick- 
ering, and Mr. Hamilton's by Mr. Wolcott, he had 
a less able cabinet, but history can say no more ; 
he parted with their predecessors with reluctance. 

We look in vain in all the acts, and words, 
written and spoken, of Washington, for a justifica- 
tion of the assertion in the preface to the Ana of 
Mr. Jefferson, who, like other active minds, when 
work was done took to scribbling, that, from the 
moment of his own " retiring from the administra- 
" tion, the federalists got unchecked hold of Gen- 
'' eral Washington ;" that " his energy was abated, 
" a listlessness of labour, a desire for tranquillity 
" had crept over him, and a willingness to let 
" others act and even think for him ;" and hence, 
as Jefferson argued, that he fell under party influ- 
ences. He had not fallen under Mr. Jefferson's 
influence ; that was the difficulty ; Mr. Hamilton 
found the same difficulty, and felt more bitterly 
about it than Mr. Jefferson. Posterity, with all 
the facts before them, may flatly deny Mr. Jeffer- 
son's conclusions. 

Mr. Jefferson could know personally nothing; 
for he does not seem to have been at the seat of 
government from the period of his resignation of 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 109 

his secretaryship to that of his return to Philadel- 
phia, at the close of Washington's administration, 
to take his seat as Vice-President. His relations 
with Washington, meanwhile, were limited to the 
exchange of four or five letters, and those not on 
political subjects. Posterity, without the best evi- 
dence, would reject the idea that Washington was a 
man for such " listlessness ;" he never was listless ; 
to the last his impulses, not to say passions, were 
high and strong.* Imperfectly educated, which 
made the assistance of secretaries, aids, and minis- 
ters with habits of thought and literary labour, 
acceptable, if not necessary to him ; cautious, but, 
like even the most rapid spirits, glad, in administer- 
ing a government, to avail himself of the judgment 
of others ; where is the evidence that he was open 
to influences which men of the highest order would 
not court and invite, and which, in effect, they 
always do court and invite ? The effort made to 

* Mr. Jefferson retired "from the administratioa" the 31st 
of December, 1793 ; two years after, the 1st of January, 
. 1796, Washington made his celebrated answer to the French 
minister, Adet, when the flags of that country were pre- 
sented to the United States: "Born, sir, in a land of 
"liberty," etc., perhaps the most zealous language Wash- 
ington ever used, and, as was well known at the time, most 
annoying to the federal party. 



110 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

show, by facts, party influence over the mind of 
Washington has been made and failed; it has 
come to nothing, and enough is known, now, of 
the true history of those days, to satisfy us that 
it will never find support. 

Jefferson, who was, to use a favourite word of 
his, a Oalloman, as Hamilton, with the whole posi- 
tiveness of his nature, was an Angloman, did not 
content himself with the high impartiality of 
Washington. His pride alone would have made 
him inaccessible to what are called influences. 
Doubtless, Jefferson w^ould have drawn him further 
in his own direction, and his conclusions, which 
were not only those of a party man, but, at the 
period of which he speaks, a dissatisfied party 
man, must have, to sustain them, two supports, 
neither of which do they possess. They must be 
specific, and they must rest on established facts. 

The division of parties was between federalists, 
so called from their favouring the adoption of the 
Federal Constitution, and what were called re- 
publicans. Washington was a federalist as a 
framer of the Constitution, and a steadfast ad- 
herent to it after it had been put in action. But 
Madison was a federalist in the same sense, and 
perhaps more fully than any other person ; yet he 
led the democratic party for years. Other mem- 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. Ill 

bers of the convention, signers of the Constitution, 
went with him and Mr. Jefferson, in opposing what 
was called the federal party; for example, Gov- 
ernor Langdon,* of New Hampshire, and Governor 
Mifflin,f of Pennsylvania. To what is known, in 
common acceptation, as j^olitics, Washington never 
put his hand. Mr. Jay's Treaty was, of all ques- 
tions during his Presidency, the most agitated, 
in and out of Congress. Not only the Treaty, but 
Washington himself was assailed ; yet he appointed 
Mr. Rutledge, one of the assailants of the Treaty, 
Chief Justice, to succeed Mr. Jay, who made it; 
and the Senate, who were politicians, rejected Mr. 
Rutledge's nomination, for his opposition to a gov- 
ernment measure. When Washington took into 
his cabinet Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Hamilton, he 
took them, not, as in later days, ministers have 
been chosen to represent parties. That would 
have been to stoop. 

If these two great men who disputed his favour, 
and other statesmen since, above all, his successors 
in the Presidency, could have had imbued in them 

* John Langdon, delegate from New Hampshire ; Gov- 
ernor of that State ; member of the Confederate Congress ; 
and Senator of the United States under the Constitution. 

f Thomas Mifflin, delegate from Pennsylvania; Governor 
of that State ; and member of the Confederate Congress. 



112 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

Washington's truly democratic idea, that the Ex- 
ecutive was meant for a public servant, and not 
a party leader, our institutions would find more 
favour than they do. This man, so stern and 
inflexible, said to a correspondent, in 1793, who 
had written to him, objecting to the schemes of 
Mr. Hamilton, "I only wish, whilst I am a ser- 
" vant of the public, to know the will of my mas- 
"ters, that I may govern myself accordingly."* 
A sentiment, be it said, which, as none can doubt 
the sincerity of him who uttered it, showed his 
intimate appreciation of our system; for if the 
people are only to be led, then where is popular 
government? To another correspondent, writing 
to him on Hamilton's financial policy, and the 
feeling it had produced, he says, "Your descrip- 
" tion of the public mind in Virginia gives me pain. 
"It seems to be more irritable, sour, and discon- 
" tented than, from the information I received, it 
"is in any other State in the Union, except Mas- 
"sachusetts, which, from the same causes, but on 
"quite diJBferent principles, is tempered like it."f 
Equal censure of Virginia and Massachusetts ! 

* Letter to Edmund Pendleton, September 23, 1793: 
Sparks's Washington, vol. x. p. 371. 

f Letter to David Stuart, June 15, 1790: Sparks's Wash- 
ington, vol. X. p. 94. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 113 

Opposition to the separate rights of the States 
was federal doctrine. Do any believe that Wash- 
ington, who, from the chair of the convention, wit- 
nessed State jealousies of those rights, and saw 
them conceded, could have contemplated their 
transgression ? Who can fail to see that Wash- 
ington's mastery over Hamilton and Jefferson, and 
the mortifications of vanity which he made them 
undergo, were very useful to the public? The key 
to Washington's disinclinations to party, and to 
his doubts of the measures of party leaders, it is 
easy to apply. Party daily compounds with what 
conscience disapproves; and to Washington, the 
only man strong enough to make his conscience 
his only guide, it was not necessary to compound. 



114 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 



CHAPTER V. 

DEMOCRACY COMES INTO POWER. 
SECTION I. 

THE FIRST THREE DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVES ; THEIR SUCCESS. 

On the 4th of March, 1801, democracy came in 
with the Presidency of Mr. Jefferson; he estab- 
lished a democratic party, raised the standard of 
victorious opposition to those who would prevent 
the onward progress of a great movement, recon- 
ciled to it, in a degree, the education and intelli- 
gence of the country, and helped to its place, its 
rights and the respect that was due to it, the creed 
of the majority of the people of the United States. 
He could not make democracy universal; but he 
made it orthodox. His government was prosper- 
ous, subject to the one blemish of a policy pacific 
to excess, and the consequent endurance by the 
country of wrongs which ought never to have been 
endured, which were not redressed by embargoes 
and non-intercourse, and came to war at last. His 
genius, his integrity which has survived all the at- 
tacks on it, overcame prepossessions, personal and 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 115 

political, and contributed to enable his two imme- 
diate successors to retire, after, each, eight fortunate 
years of office, leaving the world in reluctant ad- 
miration of a great experiment. For twenty-four 
years, democracy, derided by Mr. Hamilton and 
his followers, grew in the opinion of the world. 
At no time did it give more uneasiness to those 
who love it not ; and at no time was it so studi- 
ously decried. 

For sober encouragement of rational hope, no 
period can be pointed to, at which those who 
desire the advancement of human freedom, and 
who are not to be satisfied with government like 
that of Washington, which turned on the in- 
dividual virtues of an unequalled man, can look 
with more complacency than the twenty-four years 
comprised in the administration of the govern- 
ment of the United States by Mr. Jefferson, Mr. 
Madison, and Mr. Monroe. The reins of central 
power were held with a just and easy hand, and 
designs were no longer entertained of dismantling 
the States of their constitutional rights. Mr. 
Jefferson's were called French principles; but the 
theory, and, for the most part, the practice, of his 
democracy was to leave the people to themselves ; 
while in French democracy, unfortunately the gov- 
ernment does everything. 



116 FEARS FOR DEJUOORACY REGARDED FROM 



SECTION II. 

DEMOCRACY UNDERGOES A CHANGE. 

When Mr. Monroe withdrew, the country 
paused, in the choice of a successor, among citi- 
zens, all men of mark, but who sought the Presi- 
dential office, an element then new. Among the 
competitors for his place, who were Mr. Crawford, 
Mr. Adams, General Jackson, Mr. Calhoun, and 
Mr. Clay, the question was of persons only. As 
between Mr. Adams, who, in obtaining Mr. Mon- 
roe's place, and General Jackson, who, in his turn, 
at the close of Mr. Adams's four years, defeated 
him and came in, there was, again, no question 
that was not personal. It was a personal struggle 
for power. It was, if the comparison can be ad- 
mitted, as strictly a conflict of persons, as those 
decided with the sword, between the rival candi- 
dates for the supremacy of declining Rome. Like 
them, it marked an era. The time seemed to come 
when republican government was to undergo a 
change, and approach a more dangerous stage of 
political existence. Party diffiirences of the dem- 
ocratic and federal parties, at the end of the last 
and beginning of the present century, ran high; 
but it was not till after the contest for the succes- 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 117 

sion to Mr. Monroe, that party, having no prin- 
ciples to settle, the federalists being as a party 
extinct, and measures no longer in question, began 
to wear the livery of men. Upon the coalition 
between Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, which gave to 
Mr. Adams the Presidency by a vote of States, in 
the House of Representatives, there arose to the 
government of Mr. Adams an opposition of the 
most unsparing kind ; differing from any which 
had preceded it; a personal opposition to Mr. 
Adams, and a personal support of General Jack- 
son, as his competitor said to be wronged by the 
election of Mr. Adams. 

In historical events, to determine effect to its 
cause is often as difficult after the fact as before. 
At the end of the last century, in the loss of their 
American colonies, which proved a gain to British 
trade, wealth, and navigation, British statesmen, 
looking forward, saw nothing but ruin. To-day, 
the American looks back and asks himself the 
question. Are personal ambitions the cause that 
so much true democracy has become nothing but 
falsehood, or are they only an attending circum- 
stance, the cause lying deeper? 



118 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 



SECTION III. 

LIBERTY DOES NOT INSURE GOOD GOVERNMENT. 

The institutions of a country taken by centuries, 
ought to be the reflection of its society. But the 
curious observer, who came among us to study 
the ways of democracy, would see a society in the 
vigour of youth, and institutions Math the infirmi- 
ties of age ; fallen in favour, while the people they 
were organized to protect, rise without protection, 
in much of 'what goes to enhance the happiness of 
the country and add to the pride of its citizens. 

The people of the United States possess the 
singular advantage of having been always free; 
an advantage common to no other people. They 
have, ever, been unequivocally and absolutely free. 
The facilities for acquiring pecuniary independ- 
ence, the comforts of home, the vanities of life, 
activity of spirit, pride of country, are the lot ,of 
all. All Americans have ambition, and the effect 
has been nationality to excess ; with the spirit of 
individuality, a virtue for which there is no ex- 
cess. But this is the people. What is the gov- 
ernment? A man may have independence, sin- 
cerity, and pride, and as a politician give them 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 119 

little exercise. It may be said that the general 
tendency of all government is downwards. There 
is no reason why government in this free country 
should not have as many vices, though perhaps 
not of the same kind, as in the most despotic 
state. We are not wrong when we suppose our- 
selves, as a population, high above the standard 
of others ; but no citizen of the United States can 
think that, in point of government, the same 
superiority is to be claimed ; that the thrift and 
intelligence which belong to us as men, charac- 
terize us when we come to engage in public duties 
and the performance of the functions of office. 
Why should the American people submit to this 
humiliating difference ? 

SECTION IV. 

RESPONSIBILITY. 

The principle of government is responsibility. 
Nelson said, England expects every man to do his 
duty; a Turk would have said, the Sultan ; an Im- 
perialist, the Aulic Council; but this hero said, the 
people expected it, and to them was the responsi- 
bility. He referred his men to the country, which, 
he said, looked to them to hold it up. If opinions 
could be expressed as freely to-day as they were 
in 1787, it would be said, in 1874, that the people 



120 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

of the United States have no such expectation 
whatever as that the servants they employ will do 
their duty. 

There is said to be a looseness in democratic 
government; the laws not being executed because 
they are laws, but because the execution of them 
is expected by public opinion. In this censure 
there may be truth ; but our government is loose 
because its public opinion is base. It is that of 
some venal combination which gave it power, and 
to which, and not to the people, it answers. The 
government is unlike the people, because it neither 
is chosen by the people, nor answers to them. 

The world is said to be governed too much; 
which ought to be understood, too much for the 
governing, and too little for the governed. In 
no other sense is it true that it is governed too 
much, for men both need governing, and like to 
be governed. In this democracy of ours, we are 
most governed when the people are least feared. 
The more inactive the people, the worse is the 
government. The President of the United States, 
who rules four years, the Governor of Pennsylva- 
nia, who rules three, love the people less than any 
monarch who is to be succeeded by his son ; and 
they must be made to fear their responsibility to 
those whom they do not love. What is to be the 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 121 

public servant's motive to his duty ? It must be 
what is called responsibility, but which, in effect, 
is fear. When we were colonies, all who were in 
authority stood in fear, each of his superior, in 
due gradation, one to the other, till they came to 
the Crown and Parliament in London. Having 
thrown aside this fear, we must find another. 

SECTION Y. 

IN DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT THE RESPONSIBILITY IS TO ALL. 

Since we worshipped the sober democracy of 
Mr. Jefferson, its altars have been profaned with 
corruptions and environed with perils which, in 
his time, were unknown. The horror he taught 
of great establishments ; his dislike to money- 
making, unless with the plough, where are they ? 
He did not know that democracy was destined so 
soon to flourish, side by side, with the tallest 
weeds and rankest vices. 

It is the commonest of mistakes to think the 
past is good, and the present bad, and deceive our- 
selves ; but there are things which we know, and 
cannot deceive ourselves about. We know that 
on each occasion of the nine first Presidential 
elections, power was unsought. We know this 
has long ceased to be. We know, and only a 
great public change can account for it, that in 



122 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

the revolution of 1776, a country of some three 
millions of people produced illustrious men; and 
in that of 1860, the same country, ten times as 
populous, did not produce one. No merit ap- 
peared that was not military. We know that 
Washington offered the Department of State to 
nine different persons, of various politics, all of 
whom declined the Jfirst place in the government. 
We know that, now, the appetite for place is uni- 
versal. The day when a monarch will be the 
American Executive, is farther off than Franklin 
thought, philosopher and front-rank man though 
he was ; but the negligences of democracy have 
produced what Franklin may have looked for first, 
and which now we have, a government that 
answers to itself, and not to the people ; a govern- 
ment without responsibility. 

The earlier Presidents, men whom everybody 
knew, were put in their seats by the people. It 
became, in later years, usual for those representing 
the people in Congress, to recommend candidates 
to them. After the election of Mr. Adams, at the 
controversy of 1824-5, when the Congressional 
recommendation given to Mr. Crawford was rati- 
fied neither by the people nor the House of Repre- 
sentatives voting by States, a mode was adopted, 
which has since prevailed, with extensive conse- 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 123 

quences. They have extended themselves to 
every office in the country, from the highest to 
the lowest. The people are supposed to appoint 
delegates, and the delegates appoint the candidates; 
but to any plan of action it is a necessarily implied 
condition that the persons of the drama perform 
their parts, and in the action of a democracy the 
part of the people must not be omitted. If the 
people, the power which ought to appoint the dele- 
gates, do not appoint them, another power gets the 
people's place.* Gouverneur Morris reasoned well, 

* The fact is familiar, and appears in every variety of 
form. Mr. Lincoln, by the will of a convention of delegates, 
became the candidate of his party, and was elected President 
in 1860, when his name, out of his State, was unknown. 
Mr. Pierce, in the same way, was made President in 1852, 
though not much moi'e known to the country than Mr. Lin- 
coln. In both cases, men of national reputation were set 
aside by the delegates, who find their account, personally, 
in having inferior men the holders of executive power. So 
delegates sent to conventions, instructed by popular constit- 
uencies, or what are made to seem so, to support a certain 
candidate, reject him, and take a candidate who had not been 
thought of. This happened when Mr. Yan Buren was set 
aside, and Mr. Polk nominated and elected. Mr. Burr is said 
to have said to a young acquaintance, You will live to see. the 
President of the United States nominated by twenty thou- 
sand men in a field. It is much worse; twenty thousand 
men in a field would not be governed by a spirit of bargain, 
sale, and fraud. 



124 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

that to the people, who ought to know their men. 
ought to be committed the choice of their federal 
head. He assumed, believing it or not, that they 
were equal to the performance of this duty ; but, 
in his day, it was not imagined that b}^ combina- 
tions, now so familiar, their power could be taken 
from them. 

SECTION VI. 

THE MEANS BY WHICH IT COMES THAT GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED 
STATES IS NOT KESPONSIBLE TO ALL. 

One of the last signs of the decay of the old 
French monarchy, the great places being filled by 
the great, was a general thirst for small places, 
which sprang up in all parts of the kingdom, and 
enabled Executive power to bind its hungry fol- 
lowers to unscrupulous devotion. The disease of 
a falling monarchy has seized on a young republic. 
The proposal in the federal convention to fortify 
the central Executive by making the Governors of 
States dependent on the President was held inad- 
missible; but no Governor of a State can be elected, 
or, being elected, can maintain himself, on any 
other principle than one akin to that which the 
convention refused to entertain or consider; so 
with all State offices, all federal offices, all muni- 
cipal offices, and the members of all legislative 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 125 

and deliberative bodies, municipal. State, and 
federal. 

They look to the President, for to him they are 
bound. The allegiance is due of every placeman, 
every law-maker, every public functionary in the 
entire Union, to a chief residing at the metropolis; 
or, worse, to his rival in the field, disputing the 
succession ; and he, in return, owes his confidence 
to each and all of these subordinates. The system 
is made to work more easily by means of re- 
movals from office at each change of political power. 
A system exists by which every interest is bound 
up with Presidential patronage and aspirations. If 
no influence but that of the people were felt in the 
election of the mayor of a city, their inclinations, 
if not regulated by considerations of the public 
good, would turn upon personal or party prefer- 
ences ; but they would be municipal in their char- 
acter; municipal considerations, municipal prefer- 
ences, all referring themselves to the affairs of 
the city. Why should the people ask whether an 
aspirant to be the city chief would favour the pre- 
tensions of a certain aspirant to the Presidency ? 
The answer is, that the same machinery used to 
ends of federal patronage, is applied to those of 
city government. They who have the means to 
control votes, to the election of a President, can 



126 FEAES FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

control them to the election of a mayor. The 
like is true of all elections, and of all political 
movements. They are all controlled by the same 
hands. This system has possessed itself of suf- 
frage, to the exclusion of the people, as far as it 
is possible to exclude them; and that is well-nigh 
entirely. As almost all Executives and Legisla- 
tures^ municipal, State, and federal, are elected 
at the polls, and all placemen whatever who are 
not appointed by authority which, itself, has been 
elected at the polls, it is plain that by the con- 
trol of suffrage, power can be, as, in effect, it is 
absolutely, consolidated. Democracy gives way to 
oligarch}^; the many to the few, 

Republican central authority and its band of 
myrmidons does not, like royal authority, control 
local government ; does not choose members of 
municipal. State, and federal Legislatures; can- 
not appoint, cannot remove Governors of States, 
or mayors of cities, or any State or municipal 
functionaries; but, nevertheless, these characters 
all hold their places on condition of suit, having 
obtained them on a pledge of it. By this means, 
the Executive, the width of the continent from 
the spot where the influence is exercised, binds 
up with federal policy and his personal interests 
the local concerns of the meanest or greatest muni- 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 127 

cipality ; and central power goes, by the most des- 
picable instruments, on the meanest errands, to 
every corner of the republic. Every election is 
the President's. Every movement, however small 
it may seem, is for or against him. Thus is ex- 
pelled the local spirit, the spirit of independence, 
which is the very blood of the heart of liberty ; 
and we prepare for the day predicted by Franklin. 
We have, not a monarchy, but we have a hierarchy. 
Such is the power that corrupts the politics of 
the country, and brings upon democracy doubts 
which are thickening around us. Suffrage repre- 
sents, not the people, but combinations that usurp 
their place, and whose contrivances are the coun- 
terfeit of the popular will. 

SECTION VII. 

THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA. 

The city of Philadelphia contains seven hundred 
and fifty thousand inhabitants, one-fifth of the 
people of the State of Pennsylvania, whose popu- 
lation is three million five hundred thousand; be- 
ing an eleventh part, as the city is a fiftieth part, 
of the population of the Union, according to the 
census of 1870. Suppose the vote of the whole 
country, at a Presidential election, taken in eleven 



128 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

fractions. The hMiidful of persons who, in Philadel- 
phia, represent the Executive interest, and control 
to its needs, not on the day of the election only, 
but every day of the whole year, and permanently, 
all the immense and costly concerns of the citizens 
of Philadelphia, cast one of eleven votes that 
make the President; granting that by means of 
the city these Pretorians control the State, as 
commonly they can and do. If they do not with 
the city control the State, they cast one vote 
in fifty. That is to say, they make one link 
of the fifty or eleven links, of the chain that 
binds the Union to the footstool of Executive 
power.* 

* Whence does this handful of persons gather their power? 
They are not tyrants; they can hardly be called demagogues. 
They get it by sitting down in an empty seat, that of the 
people. There are about one hundred thousand votes in the 
city, and the law, now, divides them among about six hun- 
dred and fifty divisions so called, or polling-places; of some 
one hundred and sixty voters, or eighty of each party, to each 
division. Party calls, annually, on its voters to come and 
choose delegates to meet in convention and select the party 
candidates, but they do not come, and the party managers 
do it for them. Of the six hundred and fifty divisions there 
is, perhaps, not one in which a majority of the voters are not 
well-disposed citizens; but the well-disposed are not repre- 
sented. The delegates choose candidates like themselves, 
leaving to the voter, when he comes to the poll, no option 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 129 

SECTION VIII. 

THE citizens' NEGLECT OF DUTY, WHAT IT COMES TO. 

Governments have a principle of action ; a fun- 
damental principle, which being violated, all goes 
wrong. We live under democratic government. 
At the people's command, authority was left to 
them in 1787. But there are political currents 
that are as opposite to one another as the upper 
and lower currents of the ocean ; and democracy, 
which in 1787 was so much coveted, and was odi- 
ous too, is though coveted odious still. But it is 
not the hatred of it that accounts for its abuses, 
it is the indifference of the people to the demo- 
cratic task, the task they took on themselves ; the 
task of the control and mastery over those who 
serve them. Ask your fellow-citizen his will about 
public affairs, he expresses himself warmly ; he 

but to vote according to bidding, or not at all. What pre- 
vents the citizens of each division (it would not cost, during 
the year, the idlest or busiest man six hours of his time) 
taking as much interest in providing candidates for office as 
they do to fill offices in their associations of business, pleasure, 
charity, or devotion ? If there be divisions in which the 
majority are bad people, there will be, as democracy can rise 
no higher than its source, bad candidates, but they will be 
rare. 



130 FEA.RS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

takes a deep interest in them. But ask him what 
he is doing towards procuring a representation of 
his will, he is doing nothing. This is not demo- 
cratic government, but it is the government under 
which we live; and it has become bad government. 
Why should the people of Italy, Holland, Bel- 
gium, Germany, France, England, have better gov- 
ernments than ours, more obedience, more order, 
more system, public functionaries less ignorant 
and more capable than ours? The American 
citizen is free in his person ; but, of his property, 
more is mortgaged to the public than in any 
other country. It is a signal proof of misgovern- 
ment that, being the youngest country of the 
world, we are the most heavily taxed.* When 

* We might take, for the position, general, and perhaps 
uncontradicted, belief. But the report of the commissioners 
of the 16th of February, 1871, appointed to revise the laws 
for assessment and collection of taxes in the State of jS'ew 
York, sustains the assertion in the text. " The aggregate 
"per capita taxation of the whole country" (namely, the 
United States), "according to these different estimates, would 
"therefore be $21.83, $19.26, and $16.09, respectively; the 
"last figures representing probably the minimum, and indi- 
" eating a larger per capita taxation than any modern nation 
" has ever before been subjected to, continuously, in time of 
"peace." (Page 9.) It more than sustains the text, if the 
rate, per capita, of the most heavily taxed other countries is. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 131 

the people of Europe see their money lavished on 
showy establishments, they may not think it well 
spent; but, with us, it disappears in the collection. 
If the two interests which divide the cares of 
men, their persons and their property, are equally 
dear to us, they are very unequally protected. It 
would be astonishing to see ourselves represented 
by persons, so many of them destitute of qualifica- 
tions, did we not know that, in point of fact, they 
do not represent us. As a new people we may 
be unfinished ; the older countries may have a 
more strict economy, more perfect command of 
labour. But let us admit that, in the civilized 
world, there is no government in which office is 
so little warrant, as in ours, of personal respect- 
ability. There must be in the United States, 
where we say we choose them, more discreditable 
persons in public employ, men indifferent to their 
duties, and unworthy of them, than in any Euro- 
pean country, however governed. This may seem 
unaccountable; but no, ours is the country of all 
others, where those who give the places and those 
who fill them have the least interest in seeing the 
public served. 

as it is thought to be, very much below the ascertained niiui- 
mum of $16.09 of the United States. 



132 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 



SECTION IX. 

CENTRALIZATION. 

Ours is centralization, not as proposed to the 
convention and overruled, but democratically. 
When Mr. Hamilton, as Mr. Jefferson understood 
him, said, Purge the British constitution of its cor- 
ruption and you r)iake it mi impracticable govern- 
ment, he may have been right, speaking of a cen- 
tralized country, which was an oligarchy ; but a 
corrupt democracy, corrupted universal suffrage, 
is centralization indeed ! An established church, 
a standing army, an hereditary aristocracy, are 
sources of power that consist with public order 
and security, as we see in , so many countries of 
the world; but democratic institutions, with suf- 
frage controlled by Executive power, is the worst 
source to which authority could possibly trace 
itself If, in Great Britain, the head of the min- 
istry, or of the opposition, to make good his pre- 
tensions to the lead, should put in motion ma- 
chinery like ours, he would shake the kingdom. 
Under despotic government, even the measure of 
the sudden change of all the placemen could be 
resorted to but once. It would break everything 
to pieces. Only the robust articulation of a demo- 



THE amp:rican point of view. 133 

cratic society has enabled us to bear it. Agitation, 
which commonly is from the extremities to the 
centre, with us, more dangerous, is from the centre 
to the extremities. We have incessant turmoil, 
but not as the price of liberty. 

If Mr. Hamilton could have reversed the in- 
stincts of his countrymen, and the longings of the 
nations of the earth, and, turning back upon its 
source the current of popular feeling, made his 
experiment of a constitution, by which the Ex- 
ecutive and Senate were on life tenure, and the 
Governors of States appointed by the General 
Government, with a negative on State laws, our 
institutions, thus committed to a few, and removed 
from the influence of the many, might have en- 
dured till the country shrunk to a monarchy, or 
relieved itself by revolution. Concentrated to the 
Presidential election, democracy may be compared 
to a river whose volume of water, in its course 
towards the sea, has to pass a point where its 
channel is too narrow for it, and the stream, 
which before was salutary and refreshing, be- 
comes a turbid and filthy torrent. 



134 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 



CHAPTER YI. 

APATHY OF THE PEOPLE. 
SECTION I. 

ITS EFFECTS IN A DEMOCRACY. 

Most of the British constituencies once were 
popular ; but, in progress of time, some by corrup- 
tion, others through indifference of the many, fell 
to the few, and so much of popular power was lost, 
going to the aristocracy, a respectable order. If, 
in the United States, where the respectable order 
is the people, power is lost, it goes to conspirators, 
whose trade is plunder. 

In the debates in the British Parliament, on the 
Reform Bill of 1831-2, it was said by one of the 
Commons, opposing the reform, that any six hun- 
dred and fifty gentlemen, picked up — such was 
the expression — at Hyde Park Corner, would 
make a very good House of Commons ; meaning, 
that these persons would, other things equal, 
frame the laws and mould the policy of Great 
Britain as well as if they had been voted for in 
six hundred and fifty popular constituencies. If 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 135 

the fact be assumed, that the people are not to 
influence, the observation had wisdom as well as 
wit. It was a way of complaining of the project 
to take one of the Houses of Parliament out of 
the hands of a class, and give it to the people. 
Their system was oligarchal, and the British con- 
stitution, when they passed the Reform Bill, was 
disturbed, if not changed. In the United States, 
our system is democratic, and to contrive against 
the people, whose power, openly, none dare to 
disturb, is a crime. 

Let democracy be a mistake, we can work no 
other vein till that is exhausted. " The circum- 
"• stances and habits of every country," said Mr. 
Burke, " which it is always perilous and pro- 
'' ductive of the greatest calamities to force, are 
'■ to decide on the form of government." 

In Europe, the interest taken by the citizen in 
his government is small, and less and less as it 
approaches absohitism; in this country, less and 
less as it approaches the influence of the few. 

Party is like an army, the officers think and the 
ranks obey. It is no substitute for the noble 
independence of individual opinion. To know 
the vote of the member of any legislative body 
in the whole country, on any subject, political 
or not, you have only to know his faction. Indi- 



136 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

viduality, which is the core of the man, has been 
taken away from him. If the people cannot think 
for themselves, democracy is a false system. If 
that popular judgment, which is the surest, is 
inaccessible, or, being accessible, is unmanage- 
able, we must return to aristocracy, which has 
produced good and great men. They are never 
produced by democracy when the people are in 
that languid condition where there is no efii- 
cient public opinion. If we had had a public 
opinion, we would not have had a civil war; for 
a public sentiment that was active and efficient 
would not have suffered itself to be forced, con- 
trary to all its prejudices, into the vagaries of the 
abolitionists. 

The South American republics had govern- 
ments as well designed as ours, and they failed 
because the people did not take interest enough 
in them to support them. " In Connecticut," said 
Roger Sherman, insisting to the federal convention 
that the term of service of Senators ought to be 
short, "we have existed one hundred and thirty- 
" two years under an annual government ;" but, he 
added, " as long as a man behaves himself well he 
"is never turned out of office." Evidently, the 
virtue of that government was in the people. 
But, see the effects of the apathy of the people! 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 137 

From the time of Mr. Jefferson's coming in, to this 
day, democracy has been in the ascendant ; yet, in 
1861, the government, with the weight of its accu- 
mulated sins, went crashing to the ground, and a 
long and doubtful conflict of arms followed, drag- 
ging democracy at the heels of a soldiery. For 
the last thirty of the sixty years elapsed since Mr. 
Jefferson's election to the Presidency, the power 
of the people was not exercised, and the tenure of 
office was independent both of the will of the peo- 
ple and the behaviour of the incumbent; the con- 
sequence has been bad government. That exhausts 
the patience and wears out the spirit of a people. 
Men, for the sake of repose, surrender their liberty. 
It was thus hostilities closed between the States, 
in 1865. The people of the South, tired of war, 
which is the exaggeration of bad government, ex- 
changed their liberties for a promise. They were 
promised they should plough their lands in peace. 

SECTION II. 

THE PEOPLE OF TOWNS. 

By the census of 1870* it appears that, in the 
United States, of its 38,558,371 people there are 

* " Ninth Census of the United States. Statistics of Popu- 
"lation. Tables I. to VIII., inclusive." 

10 



138 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

5,675,775, nearly one-seventh, who inhabit towns 
and cities of upwards of 26,766 inhabitants. Add 
to these the smaller towns of 10,000 inhabitants, 
or perhaps 5000, and it will be seen how much of 
what passes for popular will is counterfeit; for 
those who usurp the people's office control much 
of all this town population. 

It was provided, by the late convention to revise 
the Constitution of Pennsylvania, that, in towns of 
upwards of one hundred thousand inhabitants, not 
more than two hundred and fifty votes should be 
taken at the same polling-place. It was meant to 
diminish the opportunities for fraud ; but fraud 
will never end, as long as the people will tolerate 
it. Elections at these small polls will be with 
more difficulty carried by fraud, until the day 
comes when the managers of them learn to apply 
it more readily, the smaller the poll is ; and that 
will be soon. No precaution avails if the people 
are indifferent. 

Patriotism is common enough as a sentiment; 
but, for purposes of action, it must be a virtue, and 
a difficulty of free government is that this virtue 
ought not to be rare. 

If, of two hundred and fifty voters, two hundred 
and forty-five stand by and let five choose their 
representatives, this means want of patriotism. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 139 

At the State election for Pennsylvania held in 
November, 1874, the city of Philadelphia polled 
for the minority ticket about forty-seven thousand 
votes ; of which not less than ten thousand had 
to be brought to the polls by the payment of the 
half-dollar tax which qualifies the voter, out of a 
public purse raised for the purpose. Five thou- 
sand dollars were thus expended in sums of half 
a dollar. Without this the votes might have been 
lost. On the other side, that of the majority, the 
probability is that a much larger number of their 
votes had to be so taken care of 



SECTION III. 

WASHINGTON'S IDEAS. 

At so early a period as the year 1786, before, in 
nolitics, corruption could have been thought of, a 
nephew of Washington wrote to him, " We have 
" lately instituted a society in these lower counties, 
'•' called the Patriotic Society. As it is something 
"new, and there are a few men both good and 
" sensible who disapprove of it, it will be a high 
" gratification to me to know your sentiments of it, 
"if you will be so kind as to communicate them. 
" The object of the institution is to inquire into the 
"state of public affairs; to consider in what the 



140 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

"true happiness of the people consists, and what 
" are the evils which have pursued, and still con- 
" tinue to molest us ; the means of attaining the 
" former and escaping the latter ; to inquire into 
" the conduct of those who represent us, and to 
" give them our sentiments upon those laws which 
"ought to be, or are already made." Washing- 
ton answered, . . . "Generally speaking, I have 
"seen as much evil as good result from such so- 
"cieties as you describe the constitution of yours 
" to be. They are a kind of imperium in imperio, 
" and as often clog as facilitate public measures. 
" I am no friend to institutions, except in local 
" matters, which are wholly, or in a great measure, 
" confined to the county of the delegates. . . . May 
" not a few members of this society, more sagacious 
" and designing than the rest, direct the measures 
" of it to private views of their own ? May not 
" this embarrass an honest, able delegate, who 
" hears the voice of his country from all quarters, 
"and thwart public measures?"* 

Did he see in these societies the germ of those 
middle men, the curse of democracy, who being 
neither people nor government, act for both ? 
These Virginia gentlemen, whose scheme Wash- 

* Letter to Bushrod Washington, September 30, 1Y86: 
Sparks's Washington, vol. x. pp. 198, 199. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 141 

ington condemned, meant to substitute themselves 
for the people, for whom he thought there must be 
no substitute. A system by which persons are 
delegated to devise principles for the people and 
rules for their representatives eats at the root of 
democracy. It is not mere stringency of party that 
makes the American legislator too timid and too 
bold. It is stringency of party controlled by cabals 
and conventions which stand between him and re- 
sponsibility to the people. 

Eleven years later, when Washington had re- 
tired to Mount Vernon and from the public ser- 
vice, as he supposed, forever, he writes to a corre- 
spondent, " The President's speech will, I conceive, 
" draw forth, mediately or immediately, an expres- 
" sion of the public mind ; and, as it is the right 
" of the people that this should be carried into 
" eflfect, their sentiments ought to be unequivocally 
" known, that the principles on which the govern- 
" ment has acted, and which, from the President's 
" speech, are likely to be continued, may either be 
" changed, or the opposition, that is endeavouring 
"to embarrass every measure of the Executive, 
"may meet effectual discountenance."* Such was 
this man's idea of duty. The Executive was to 

* Letter to Thomas Pinckney, May 28, 1791 : Sparks's 
Washington, vol. xi. p. 202. 



142 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" draw forth" " an expression of the public mind, 
" and, as it is the right of the people that this 
" should be carried into effect," to change, if need 
were, his policy, and make it accord with it. A 
President, now, who changed his front, would be 
ruined. His business would be, in case of hesita- 
tion in the public mind, to summon to the field his 
office-holders. 

SECTION IV. 

JEFFERSON'S IDEAS. 

Writing to a friend in 1816, Mr. Jefferson said,* 
" Where every man is a sharer in the direction of 
" his ward-republic, or of some of the higher ones, 
" and feels that he is a participant in the govern- 
" raent of affairs, not merely at an election one 
" day in the year, but every day ; when there shall 
"not be a man in the State who will not be a 
"member of some one of its councils, great or 
" small, he will let the heart be torn out of his 
" body sooner than his power be wrested from him 
" by a Caesar or a Bonaparte. How powerful did we 
" feel the energy of this organization in the case of 
" the Embargo! I felt the foundations of the gov- 
" ernment shaken under my feet by the New Eng- 

* Letter to Mr. Cabell, February 2, 1816: Jefferson's 
Works, vol. vi. p. 544. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 143 

" land townships. There was not an individual in 
" their States whose body was not thrown with all 
" its momentum into action ; and although the 
" whole of the other States were known to be in 
" favour of the measure, yet the organization of this 
" little selfish minority enabled it to overrule the 
" Union." These were the people. They were to 
make up their own- minds. Have we returned to, 
once more, the European idea that they were to 
have their minds made up for them? He urges 
on his correspondent that " the way to have good 
" and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, 
" but to divide it among the many ;" to divide and 
subdivide " these republics from the great national 
" one down, through all its subordinations, until it 
"ends in the administration of every man's farm 
"by himself;" to avoid "the generalizing and con- 
"centrating all cares and powers into one body, 
"no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia 
" or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian 
" Senate." 

SECTION V. 

THE BETTER CLASSES. 

With a waywardness that is wonderful, the ele- 
ments of society the most interested in govern- 
ment, the respectability, the capacity, the property, 



144 FEARS FOE DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

the education, stand aloof from it. The silly 
boast, so often heard, of abstinence from politics, 
ought to be looked upon as a marvel of folly; 
for where will these abstinent citizens find them- 
selves at last, if their private concerns cannot come 
for succour to that common and general welfare 
of the republic, and of republican liberty, with- 
out which all the rest is idleness and vanity ? If 
the enlightened, the learned, the wise, the rich, 
choose to stand aside from public duties and affairs, 
and commit to their own unaided efforts, without 
that precept and example, which it is important 
they should have, their less fortunate fellow-citi- 
zens, let them cease to complain of the disappoint- 
ments of democracy. 

SECTION VI. 

THE people's influence. 

What is that influence which is not judicial, is 
not legislative, is not executive ? It is the influ- 
ence of the people; and if meant to exist, it is 
meant to be felt. When Hamilton said to the 
federal convention, speaking of the British House 
of Lords, " it is a most noble institution," he meant 
for influence, more than legislation ; the influence 
of the landholders, who in England have been the 
people since the division of the island after the 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 145 

Conquest. Look at any legislative body, aristo- 
cratic or democratic; how few really able men, 
how many ruled by motive merely selfish and 
scarcely honest. Without the influence of society, 
namely, the pressure from without, what is gov- 
ernment? Hamilton wanted influence in order 
that faction might not snatch it; and that has 
happened ; faction has snatched it. His fear has 
come to pass. Is democracy, as he called it, a 
" poison" ;* as Mr. Gerry called it, " the worst of 
all political evils" ?-j- Hamilton, whom we cite, 
not in derogation of a great and illustrious citizen, 
but as a representative man, whose opinions con- 
trolled those of a train of followers, thought the 
landholders could wield an influence and the 
people could not. Actually the people do not 
wield it. What makes the pride of the citizen is 
his importance; but where is it if his influence is 
gone? Where is the pride of the citizen when, 
through political contrivances to which he is be- 
coming almost reconciled, he sees himself in the 
keeping of the venal and the vile ? 

* Letter to Mr. Sedgwick, July 10, 1804: Hamilton's 
Works, vol. vi. p. 568. 

f Madison Papers, vol. iii. p. 1603. 



146 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 
SECTION VII. 

FAULTS OF GOVERNMENT AKE THE FAULTS OF THE PEOPLE. 

The faults of government in the United States 
must be looked for in the people. They let their 
will be intercepted by a scum which lies on the sur- 
face, and that scum is reflected in their government 
and institutions. The institutions of Engrland re- 
fleet the selfishness of an aristocracy, mixed with 
a certain awe of the people. The institutions of 
Asia, where they were told three thousand years 
ago, " thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass 
"together," and where they are told like things 
to-day, reflect barbarism. It was remarked of the 
Scotch Highlanders, who, by the Act of Union of 
1701, became citizens of Great Britain, that, for 
years, they had none of the advantages of their 
citizenship, by reason of the rudeness of their 
society. If the Constitution and laws of this 
Union were transferred to Asia, they might stand 
in the book unaltered, and be nothing but a des- 
potism; as the British government would have 
been in 1701, had all its subjects been High- 
landers. We may be sure the vices of govern- 
ments will be as great as the people will bear. 
The ultimate point of virtue, of which government 
is capable, is marked by society. It cannot be 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 147 

better than society, and may be much worse. 
When they lived on revenues of their own, kings 
were solitary tyrants. When, royal revenues being 
mortgaged and sold, the people began to come for- 
ward, and taxing them had to be resorted to, the 
prince found himself, in some sort, a member of 
society. 



148 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 



CHAPTER YIL 

DEMOCRACY TESTED BY THE INSTITUTION OF DOMESTIC 
SLAVERY. 

SECTION I. 

ADMITTED INTO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The people of the United States, with the confi- 
dence of freemen, who, making the laws, are more 
ready to obey than those who, reluctantly receiv- 
ing, are swift to disregard them, to form their 
union, imposed on themselves the constitutional 
necessity to respect the institution of slavery. 
But, when Providence let the mother-country 
gratify its avarice in the trade of slaves, and curse 
their colonies with buying and holding them, 
Divine wisdom prepared for the new democracy 
discredit and shame. 

SECTION II. 

FOREIGN INFLUENCE. 

It had been among the fears on the floor of the 
convention of 1787, that foreign influence would be 
brought to bear on the election of the President of 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 149 

the United States; and some years after, the 
subject of abolishing their slavery and slave- 
trade was discussed in England, a foreign country 
whose influence in the United States has been 
great. The feeling was confined to England. In 
1814, after much agitation there, it had become 
so prominent that a communication was made 
to the government of France, by the British 
Embassador, that the French newly -established 
royalty was expected, by their recently-acquired 
English friends, to take the abolition of the slave- 
trade into immediate consideration. The British 
Embassador, who was the Duke of Wellington,* 
that made known this expectation, was sneer- 
ingly asked by the French minister who received 
it, whether it was really possible that the King, his 
master, whose soldiers, native-born Englishmen, he 
enlisted into slavery for life, could disturb himself 
about the bondage of a few barbarous Africans. 
The French minister expressed the common Euro- 
pean sentiment of that day. 

But English agitation increased, and enlarged 
its sphere, from abolition, so far as it could be 
reached, of the trade in slaves by themselves 
and other nations, to the emancipation of tlieir 
own negroes, which took place in the year 1834. 
* Despatches of the Duke of Welliugtou, vol. xii. 



150 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

From that day forth, British benevolence, which 
had the undeniable merit of paying a sum of 
money for the freedom of their own slaves, ad- 
dressed itself confidently, and more openly than 
before, to fanatical feeling, and democratical sus- 
ceptibilities, in the United States. It gave un- 
happy reality to the fears of 1787. It lent the 
aid of the British press, inspired by the senti- 
ment of a few persons, and the natural jealousy 
of all England of the rising fortunes of those who 
had been their colonists and now were their rivals, 
to the struggle of American agitation, which 
finally subjected the election of a President of 
the United States to the degradation and shame 
of a foreign and hostile influence. But for British 
meddling, we might never have seen recent events. 
Its countenance gave to fanaticism that mother- 
country respectability which, in the last century, 
was acknowledged, unlamented, by the Jeflersons 
and Franklins. With an incomparable national 
vanity, we have never had, to this day, pride 
enough to overcome that colonial feeling, which 
long ago ceased to be respectable. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 151 



SECTION III. 

SLAVERY AND FREEDOM. 



Forced on us for the sake of English gains, 
though slavery had prevailed in all the colonies, 
it was, after their independence, abolished by those 
of the North, where it was found to be unprofitable. 
In the South, where it was profitable, it remained. 
The prejudice of race, nowhere stronger than in 
the North, and the feeling of resentment towards 
those who, under pretence of bettering the condi- 
tion of the unfortunate blacks, aspired to unsettle 
the compromises of the Constitution, were illus-. 
trated in the North by acts of popular fur}^ against 
the originators of the agitation. In the universal 
and honest horror of the people, with which the 
principles of those men were received in all parts 
of the Northern States, seemed to beat the pulse of 
the country. But though there has been no, time 
when the world did not abound in slaves, and the 
citizen of the United States saw in his bondmen 
the poor negroes, by nature beneath improvement, 
not creatures like himself, capable of enlighten- 
ment and education, the enforced service of human 
beings could never be less than odious. 

It was reproached to the South that they were 
an aristocracy ; but there was more equality and 



152 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

more freedom in the South than in the North, 
when the slave line was passed. " I do not mean, 
" sir," said Mr. Burke, in his speech on the con- 
ciliation of America, "to commend the superior 
^morality of the sentiment, which has at least as 
' much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the 
' nature of man. The fact is so ; and these people 
' of the southern colonies are much more strongly, 
' and with an higher and more stubborn spirit, at- 
^ tached to liberty than those to the northward. 
' Such were all the ancient commonwealths ; such 
* were our Gothic ancestors; such in our days were 
' the Poles ; such will be all masters of slaves who 
' are not slaves themselves. In such a people the 
' haughtiness of domination combines w^ith the spirit 
' of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible." 
The mind must be diseased, or greatly deceived, 
to make a general defence of slavery ; but to us 
it was by no means an universal evil. How far it 
may have aided, as Burke supposed, to fire the 
spirit of liberty, need not be inquired; but that 
political virtue, more important to a republic than 
private virtue, which has become less and less 
common in the North, did not decay in the South. 
The honour of the country was always safe with 
them. The political South produced more truly 
independent spirits than the North. The corre- 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 153 

spondence, lately published, of Mr. Crittenden,* 
shows a public man, during a career of fifty years 
of service without a stain, who never looked, in all 
that time, to the right or the left, and yet had, 
from first to last, at the hands of his constituents, a 
political support, as steady as the honourable con- 
fidences of private life. But a people half slaves 
when around them all are free, are at incurable 
disadvantage. It is a weakness, that steals on their 
whole organization. 

Slaves were ever regarded by their Southern 
masters as weakness to the commonwealth, the 
heaviest burden on prosperity, and a possession 
the most uncertain of all. This feeling was well 
expressed in the federal convention by a delegate 
from North Carolina, when, the question being on 
leaving South Carolina and Georgia out of the 
Union, or permitting them to import negroes for a 
limited period, he said that, " both in opinion and 
" practice, he was against slavery ; but thought it 
" more in favour of humanitj^, from a view of all 
"circumstances, to let in South Carolina and 
" Georgia on those terms, than to exclude them 
"from the Union." 

* Life of John J. Crittenden, with Selections from his Cor- 
respondence and Speeches; edited by his daughter, Mrs. 

Chapman Coleman. 

11 



154 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

No man could say what was to be the solution 
of the problem of negro slavery ; and no man can 
sayy now; for who can insist on the gain by emanci- 
pation, when we still have the negro ? In Europe 
the question was resolved by time ; slavery gave 
way before the changes of society^ and the last of 
it disappeared in the present century.* " To set 

* "In almost no part of Germany, at the end of the 
"eighteenth century, was slavery completely abolished, and 
"in most places the people were positively attached to the 
"glebe, as in the Middle Ages. Almost all the soldiers who 
" composed the armies of Frederick II. and Maria Theresa 
" were actual slaves. In most of the German States, in 
" 1788, the peasant could not quit the seignory, and if he did 
" he could be pursued, wherever he was, and brought back 
"by force, etc. He could neither rise; nor change his occu- 
"pation, nor marry, but by the consent of his master. A 
" large part of his time must be given to his service," etc. 
L'ancien Regime et la Revolution, par Alexis de Tocqueville, 
pp. b1, 58. 

Note to p. 57 (p. 870) of that work: 

" Dates of abolition of slavery in Germany. 

"It will be seen by the following table that the abolition 
" of slavery in most of the countries of Germany is very 
" recent. Slavery was abolished : 

" 1. In the territory of Baden in 1783 ; 

" 2. In Hohenzollern in 1789 ; 

" 3. In Schleswig and Holstein in 1804 ; 

" 4. In Nassau in 1808. 

" 5. Prussia. Frederick William I. had abolished, from 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 155 

" the slaves afloat at once," said a great eiiinncipa- 
tionist, Washington, with his habitual moderation 
of language, and at a time when they were in 
number not much more than half a million,* 
" would, I really believe, be productive of much 
" inconvenience and mischief" But the father of 

" nil, slavery in Ins domains. The code of the great Fred- 
"erick, as we have seen, pretended to abolish it in the whole 
"kingdom; but in reality he only abolished the severest 
"form, leiheigenschaft ; he preserved it under its mild form, 
" erhunterthaenigkeit. It was only in 1 800 it ceased entirely. 
" 6. In Bavaria slavery disappeared in 1808. 
" 7. A decree of Napoleon, dated at Madrid, in 1808, abol- 
*' ished it in the grand duchy of Berg, and in various other 
" small territories, such as Erfurth, Baireuth, etc. 

"8. In the kingdom of Westphalia its abolition dates 
"from 1808 and 1809. 

"9. In the principality of Lippe-Detmold, from 1809 ; 
" 10. In Lippe-Schomburg, from 1810; 
" 11. In Swedish Poraerania, also from 1810 ; 
"12. In Hesse-Darmstadt, from 1809 and 1811 ; 
"13. In Wiirteraberg, from 1817 ; 
" 14. In Mecklenburg, from 1820 ; 
"15. In Oldenburg, from 1814; 
" 16. In Lusatia, in Saxony, from 1832 ; 
"17. In Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, from 1833 only; 
"18. In Austria, from 1811. From 1782, Joseph II. had 
"abolished the leiheigenschaft; but slavery under its mild 
"form, erhunterthaenigkeit, lasted until 1811." 

* Letter to La Fayette, Mount Vernon, May 10, 1786. 



156 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

his country never imagined giving them political 
power. 

By the census of 1870, of the population of the 
United States more than the eighth part is 
negroes ;* we are by one-eighth less capable of 
self-government than before we gave votes to 
them. It is probable that in the United States, of 
the very humblest part of society, there were few 
men not competent to the exercise of the right of 
suffrage ; w^e may conjecture that not a citizen in 
fifty was incompetent. But, by giving the negro a 
vote, it is every eighth voter that is incompetent; 
a sudden and frightful degradation. Were the 
population of the United States all negroes, their 
institutions would not last a year. They would 
not last much longer if half were negroes. What 
the influence is to be of the eighth part being 
negroes remains to be seen. If there be anything 
which the Almighty, who leaves so much dark and 
impenetrable, has made plain, it is that the works 
of his hand are meant to differ in perfectness ; and 
that it is not training and education which makes 

* See Ninth Census of the United States, Statistics of 
Population, Tables I. to YIII., inclusive: p. 3, total popula- 
tion, year 1870, 38,538,311 ; p. 4, total white population, 
year 1810, 33,589,371 ; p. 5, total free colored population, 
year 1810, 4,880,009. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 157 

the difference between orders of animals and races 
of men ; between the intellectuality of the Hot- 
tentot and of the countrymen of Raphael and 
Galileo. 

The aborigines are a very superior race to the 
negro ; what would be thought of the statesman 
who should transfer to the cultivated fields and 
cities of this Union what remains unslaughtered in 
their woods of those unfortunate beings to whom 
the North American continent once belonged ; be- 
stowing on them civil rights, and making them 
numerical majorities in some States, and voters 
in all ? 

If we are to have a negro level, or a level 
measured and adjusted to the relative proportion 
between white and negro population, our intel- 
ligence and virtue, public and private, must come 
down to it. Congress, the newspapers, state papers, 
art, science, and literature, the whole intercourse 
of life, all that we say and do, must descend to it. 



SECTION IV. 

THE MISSOURI QUESTION. 



Before the slavery question was made to bear 
on the Presidency, and when it first showed itself, 
in the form of the Missouri restriction, Mr. Jeffer- 



158 FEARS FOE DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

son, than whom was no truer emancipationist, and 
the quickness of whose political vision was one of 
his distinguishing traits, looking out from his re- 
tirement at the condition of the country, thus 
expressed his fears for the future; he expressed 
them with that zeal which sometimes interfered 
with the soundness of his conclusions: "With 
' us things are going on well; the boisterous sea of 
' liberty indeed is never without a wave, and that 
' from Missouri is now rolling towards us, but we 
' shall ride over it as we have over all others. It 
'• is not a moral question, but one merely of power. 
' Its object is to raise a geographical principle for 
' the choice of a President, and the noise will be 
' kept up till that is effected. All know that per- 
' mitting the slaves of the South to spread into 
' the West will not add one being to that unfortu- 
' nate condition, that it will increase the happi- 
'ness of those existing, and, by spreading them 
' over a larger surface, will dilute the evil every- 
' where, and facilitate the means of getting finally 
' rid of it, an event more anxiously wished by 
' those on whom it presses than by the noisy pre- 
' tenders to exclusive humanity. In the mean 
• time, it is a ladder for rivals climbing to power."* 

* Letter to La Fayette, December 26, 1820: Jefferson's 
Works, vol. vii. p. 194. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 159 

It is a wretched fact, but none the less true, that 
in the contests of States right and wrong matter 
little. Power cuts the knot; argument there may 
be, but power settles it. We have made numerous 
treaties in adjustment of controversies with Great 
Britain, and, for the most part, have had reason 
on our side, and the best of the argument, as the 
weaker party commonly has ; but every case went 
against us until 1871, when the Alabama case, the 
most doubtful we ever debated, was determined in 
our favour. It was not right and wrong, but the 
balance of power, much altered of late years, that 
ruled the Alabama question on principles which 
half a century before were appealed to in vain. 
So, with power, the Slavery question changed too. 

That question first appeared, in the federal con- 
vention, at a time when the difference of power 
between the North and South was almost nothing. 
The question was how population should be 
counted with a view, particularly, to representa- 
tion ; and the South, holding many slaves, said 
they must be counted ; the North, holding few, 
said, No,'^' if animals of draft and burden are 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 842, 843. Mr. Gerry : "Why, 
"then, should the blacks, who were property in the South, 
" be in the rule of representation more than the cattle and 
"horses of the North?" 



160 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

counted, we must count our horses as well as our 
slaves ; and what is known as the three-fifths rule 
was established, which was a just settlement. The 
parties, when they made it, had nearly equal 
power. By that settlement, a slave. North or 
South, was reckoned, for purposes of representa- 
tion, at two-fifths less than the freeman, and on 
this basis democracy elected its great men. But in 
1819 a seed was sown which produced deadly fruit; 
out of it grew events which have exhibited the 
weakness of democracy; events, the ultimate con- 
sequences of which remain to be developed. 

The population of the North had much increased 
over that of the South ; and when, in that year, 
Missouri applied for admission to the Union, the 
House of Representatives, by a vote of eighty-seven 
against seventy-six,* refused her admittance as a 

* The vote on the clause of the bill prohibiting " the fur- 
"ther introduction of slavery" was 81 to 76; on the .clause 
providing that children born after the admission of the State 
to the Union shall be free at the age of twenty-five years, the 
vote was 82 to 18 ; on ordering the bill engrossed for a third 
reading, the vote was 9t to 56. (Annals of Congress, pp. 
1214, 1215, February 16, 1819.) In the Senate, voting by 
States, the majority was against the restriction. The Com- 
promise Bill passed the House the 2d of March, 1820, by 
a vote of 134 to 42. Annals of Congress, pp. 1587, 1588, 
March 1, 1820. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 161 

slave State. This was power; the simplest ex- 
ercise of it; unconstitutional in the highest sense, 
for it violated the Constitution in a way that dis- 
turbed the foundations of the Union. From ter- 
ritory which had been acquired from France by 
the common treasure of the Union, the South was 
excluded. 

SECTION V. 

THE EQUALITY OF THE STATES. 

To refuse to a new State the rights which the 
old States had, was to deny her equality with them. 
The State of Missouri must be equal to Pennsyl- 
vania; no State could be above another, or have 
superior rights to another. Pennsylvania had 
abolished slavery ; she might restore it : Virginia 
tolerated slavery ; she might abolish it : but this 
was not to be so with Missouri. If this restriction 
could be placed on Missouri, so could another; her 
suffrage might be abridged, her religious freedom ; 
she might have a restricted press, or curtailed 
representation in Congress. Upon the rule of the 
inequality of one State with another, the vital 
principle of the Union was gone. The pernicious 
consequences of inequality, the impossibility of 
union on any terms short of equality, have been 
signally developed by events since the close of the 



162 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

war. But war was not necessary to the establish- 
ment, in reason, of a rule so plain. Union cannot 
be founded on the degradation of a party to it. 

To banish immediate fears, what was called the 
Missouri Compromise followed, saving the Union, 
for the time. It was made the condition of the 
admission of Missouri that thenceforth no States 
should hold slaves north of the line 36° 30'; 
that in " territory ceded by France to the United 
" States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies 
'' north of 36° 30' of north latitude, not included 
" in the limits of the State contemplated by this 
" act," namely, the State of Missouri, " slavery and 
"involuntary servitude, otherwise than for the 
" punishment of crime, whereof the parties shall 
" be duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever 
" prohibited." Thus the South, instead of being 
excluded from all the newly-acquired territory, 
were excluded from part of it ; and this was the 
Missouri Compromise. It was a constitutional 
change effected, not by amendment of the Consti- 
tution, but by a law of Congress. A statute recast 
the States in a new relation with one another, 
neither consistent with concord, nor conceived by 
the founders of the Union. Better would it have 
been, could the area of slavery have remained 
without a limit, and the Union have lived in 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 163 

peace; but the weakness of the South had been 
brought to light, and party was prompt to use 
it. In 1819 the ground was Laid for those agita- 
tions which came to civil war in 1861. The 
South, though, as Mr. Jefferson said of slavery, 
it was "not a moral question, but one merely 
of power," lost caste as well as power. They 
had submitted to an injury that was a standing 
affront, and it became the available precedent 
for universal solution of all questions that after- 
wards arose about negro slavery, which was es- 
tablished to be, not only a moral wrong, but a 
political disability. Such was the Missouri Com- 
promise, a compromise that was a fatal blow to 
the Constitution. It "was eagerly sought by the 
South, reluctantly consented to by the North. 
From that day the most vulnerable of our insti- 
tutions, negro slavery, ceased to have constitu- 
tional protection. It had to look to acts of 
Congress. 

SECTION VI. 

HOW THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE BILL OBTAINED THE EXECUTIVE 
APPROVAL. 

The means by which the Missouri act obtained 
the signature of the President, Mr. Monroe, is a 
piece of history that was brought to light in 1848, 



164 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

in a debate in the Senate. Tlie question was on 
the territorial government of Oregon.* Among 
Mr. Monroe's manuscripts was found, written with 
his own hand, a paper marlced " Interrogatories, 
" Missouri— March 4th, 1820— to the heads of 
" departments and attorney-general — questions — 
" Has Congress a right, under the powers vested in 
" it by the Constitution, to make a regulation pro- 
" hibiting slavery in a Territory ? Is the eighth 
" section of the act which passed both Houses on 
^' the 3d inst., for the admission of Missouri into 
" the Union, consistent with the Constitution ?" 
With it was found the draft of a letter in Mr. 
Monroe's writing, the draft not addressed, but the 
letter supposed to have been written to General 
Jackson. The text of the draft, which is some- 
what interlined, reads thus : " Dear Sir, — The 
" question which has lately agitated Congress and 
^' the public has been settled, as you have seen, by 
" the passage of an act for the admission of Mis- 
" souri as a State, unrestrained, and Arkansas, 
"likewise, when it reaches maturity, and the 
•' establishment of 36° 30' north latitude as a line, 
"north of which slavery is prohibited, and per- 
" mitted to the south. I took the opinion, in 
" writing, of the administration, as to the constitu- 

* Congressional Globe, July 26, 1848, pp. 1178, 1179. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 165 

" tionality of restraining Territories, [and the vote 
" of each member was unanimous and] which was 
" explicit in favour of it, and as it was that the 
" eighth section of the act was applicable to Terri- 
*' tories only, and not to States when they should 
'' be admitted into the Union. On this latter point 
"I had at first some doubt; but the opinions of 
"others, whose opinions were entitled to weight 
" with me, supported by the sense in which it was 
''viewed by all who voted on the subject in Con- 
egress, as will appear by the Journals, satisfied 
" me respecting it." 

In the same debate were produced, obtained 
from the family of Mr. John Quincy Adams, then 
dead, but in 1820 Mr. Monroe's Secretary of State, 
and during the whole of both terms of his Presi- 
dency, these extracts fro?i) the diary of Mr. 
Adams. " March 3, 1820. When I came this day 
'' to my office, I found there a note requesting me 
" to call at one o'clock at the President's house. It 
" was then one, and I immediately went over. He 
" expected that the two bills, for the admission of 
'' Maine and to enable Missouri to make a consti- 
" tution, would have been brought to him for his 
"signature; and he had summoned all the mem- 
" bers of the administration to ask their opinions 
" in writing, to be deposited in the Department of 



166 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" State, upon two questions : 1. Whether Congress 
^' had a constitutional right to prohibit slavery in 
"^^ a Territory ? and 2d. Whether the eighth section 
"^'of the Missouri bill (which interdicts slavery 
^'•forever in the territory north of 36 i latitude) 
^'was applicable only to the territorial state, or 
" would extend to it after it should become a State ? 
" As to the first question, it was unanimously 
" agreed that Congress have the power to prohibit 
"slavery in the Territories. March 5. The Presi- 
"dent sent me yesterday the two questions in 
" writing, upon which he desired to have answers 
" in writing, to be deposited in the Department of 
" State. He wrote me that it would be in time, 
" if he should have the answers to-morrow. The 
" first question is in general terms, as it was stated 
" at the meeting on Friday. The second was 
"modified to an inquiry whether the eighth sec- 
" tion of the Missouri bill is consistent with the 
"Constitution. To this I can without hesitation 
" answer by a simple affirmative, and so, after some 
" reflection, I concluded to answer both. March 6. 
"... I took to the President's my answers to his. 
" two constitutional questions, and he desired me 
" to have them deposited in the Department, to- 
" gether with those of the other members of the 
" administration. They differed only as they as- 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 167 

" signed their reason for thinking the eighth sec- 
" tion of the Missouri bill consistent with the 
"Constitution, because they considered it as only 
" applying to the territorial term ; and I barely 
" gave my opinion, without assigning for it any 
" explanatory reason. The President signed the 
" Missouri bill this morning." 

Thus, the Missouri Compromise may be said 
to have received the Executive sanction because, 
taken in its true meaning, it seemed so plainly 
unconstitutional that another meaning had to be 
given it. It was to be supposed, so Mr. Monroe 
said, that Congress meant to restrict, not States, 
only territory before becoming States; and that 
from our acquired possessions north of 36° 30' 
slavery was excluded by this bill, while they were 
in territorial condition ; not when they came in as 
States ; they were not then controlled or control- 
lable. They might, as might those south of the 
line, or the original States, whether north or south, 
establish or abolish slavery at their pleasure. 
This, as distinctly appears by Mr, Monroe's words, 
namely, "The eighth section of the act was appli- 
" cable to Territories only, and not to States when 
" they should be admitted into the Union," was as- 
sumed by him to be its meaning. It was the con- 
struction on which he signed the bill. " On this 



168 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

"latter point," he says, "I had at first some doubt; 
" but the opinions of others, whose opinions were 
" entitled to weight with me" (meaning his cabi- 
net), "supported by the sense in which it was 
"viewed by all who voted on the subject in Con- 
"gress, as will appear by the Journals, satisfied me 
" respecting it." 

But, what support is given by the Journals? 
None whatever. The bill for the admission of 
Missouri having gone from the House to the Senate 
with a clause against slavery, the Senate struck it 
out, and inserted the eighth or compromise section; 
and, a committee of conference being appointed, the 
compromise was agreed to by both Houses. The 
bill which had originally been only for the admis- 
sion of Missouri, became also a bill for the future 
limitation of slavery in the " territories ceded by 
" France ;" and its title was amended accordingly. 
Originally, it concerned only Missouri; now, it con- 
cerned all the " territory ceded by France to the 
" United States." The Senate Journal, therefore, 
of the 2d of March, 1820, page 203, after the en- 
try that the bill passed, contains the entry of the 
amendment of its title : " It was agreed to amend 
" the title by adding thereto and to prohibit slavery 
" in certain Territories" So the House Journal of 
the next day, the 3d of March, page 279, after the 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 169 

entry of the concurring vote on the Senate amend- 
ments, proceeds thus: "The amendment to the 
" title to add to the words and to proJiibit slavery 
" in certain Territories was then also concurred in." 

This amendment of title, necessary to accuracy, 
but not altering the prohibition, is all which the 
Journals furnish bearing upon the sense in which 
the compromise "was viewed by all who voted on 
" the subject in Congress ;" and which being, as 
Mr. Monroe construed it and all the members of 
his cabinet but Mr. Adams, that the limitation 
applied to Territories, not States, enabled him to 
sign the bill. Here is history; for the existence 
of the rough draft of Mr. Monroe's letter may be 
taken to be authenticated, and nothing to remain 
in question but the less material fact whether the 
letter was actually sent. 

Mr. Monroe was so upright a man that Mr. 
Jefferson somewhere says of him, If Ms soul were 
turned lurong side out, not a spot would he found on 
it; but, not choosing to understand Congress uncon- 
stitutionally, he thought himself at liberty to give 
to this bill a construction which, being constitu- 
tional, was in contradiction of its meaning. If 
the title of the act was susceptible of a double con- 
struction, the debate in Congress, like the language 
of the body of the act, was not. The restriction 

12 



170 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

was upon States, too clearly. The cry was, No 
more slave States. The compromise was, No more 
slave States north of 36° 30'. Slavery in the States, 
not in the Territories, was the question ; slavery 
in the Territories was a very inferior consideration. 
The question debated was the constitutional right 
of Congress to place a restriction on the State of 
Missouri. The bill, as it passed the House, placed 
the restriction on the State of Missouri. Missouri, 
as a State, was not to tolerate slavery ; the House 
voted again and again, in the course of the debate 
and proceedings, their prohibition of the toleration 
of slavery by Missouri as a State of the Union. The 
bill, as it passed, declared that the ''further intro- 
"duction of slavery or involuntary servitude" was 
" prohibited ;" and that " all children born within 
" the said State after the admission thereof into 
" the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty-five 
" years." Mr. Monroe chose to sign the compro- 
mise in a constitutional sense ; but it is none the 
less certain that the whole country, then, and ever 
since, all the States for fifty years, their Repre- 
sentatives in Congress, and the Judiciary, have 
read it as stamping with inequality the States 
coming into the Union after the 6th of March, 
1820, north of the line 36° 30' north. 

The constitution of a country, more especially 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 171 

if it be a written constitution, must be sacred, or 
there can be no safety. Its violation is avenged 
by Providence. Not that special providence which 
men arrogate to their protection, but that general 
providence of a wise Creator by which what is bad 
leads to worse. 

SECTION VII. 

THE CALN PETITION IK THE SENATE. 

The slavery agitation did not begin in 1819. If 
it was meant to begin, the attempt failed. What 
Mr. Jefferson witnessed was but the gathering of 
the clouds ; the storm did not burst till after his 
death. Mr. Webster said in the Senate, on the 
7th of March, 1850, " These abolition societies 
"commenced their course of action in 1835." 
Taking his date as correct, though the South were, 
at that time, full of fear, the agitation had not yet 
assumed a political form, and the assurance was 
given them of all Northern members of the Senate, 
strongly and unanimously expressed, in the ses- 
sion of 1835-6, in a highly-interesting debate, to 
which, now, we turn, that this agitation, which, 
then begun, stopped not till it was able to make, 
and did make, a President of the United States, 
need not be a subject of alarm, and could never 
have any countenance, political or other, from the 



172 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

people of the North. They denounced it as par- 
ricidal, ruinous to the slave-holding States, and 
leading North and South to inevitable disunion. 
They declared it incredible that such a fearful 
topic should, anywhere, be taken up for discussion 
by a political party. According to every Northern 
Senator's opinion, political agitation against slavery 
was out of the question; a baseness not even to 
be imagined. Every word then uttered was true, 
less predictions and promises. The debate began 
the 11th of January, 1836. Mr. Buchanan pre- 
sented to the Senate, and gave rise to it, the 
"^ Memorial of the Cain Quarterly Meeting of the 
" religious society of Friends in Pennsylvania, 
" praying Congress to abolish slavery and the slave- 
" trade in the District of Columbia." 

The disposal of this petition, for the sake of all- 
important example, was the subject, at intervals, 
of anxious and, apparently, candid discussion, from 
the day it was presented till the 11th of March 
following, exactly two months;* and brought to 
their feet Senators from every part of the Union, 
and of all diversities of opinion, so far as diver- 
sity there was on this subject at that day. Mr. 
Buchanan moved that the petition be received and 

* Gales and Seaton's Congressional Debates, 1835-6, pp. 
99-810, part 1. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 173 

/rejected, and his motion prevailed by a vote of 
thirty-four to six. One of the six was Mr. Web- 
ster himself; like the majority, he and the five 
other Senators composing the minority, only 
looked, in their votes, to the best method of 
avoiding agitation, in detesting and deploring the 
idea of which all united ; Senators from Ohio, 
Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hamp- 
shire, Connecticut, and New Jersey taking part 
in the debate, and expressing sentiments similar 
to those of Senators from Southern States. But 
the ri^ht of petition was said to be involved, and 
must be treated gently. Abolition itself was a 
thing much too inconsiderable to be feared in 
any form ; and that it should force its way into 
politics was out of the question. This, indeed, was 
true in 1836 as it was in 1860, if what these gen- 
tlemen called politics meant the will of the people, 
and not the aspirations and contrivances of politi- 
cians. One of the Northern Senators indignantly 
exclaimed,* " It has been said that this question 
'' must and would mingle itself with the politics of 
" the day. It has been said by a distinguished 
" Senator that it would be mixed with the ap- 
" proaching public elections. Sir, I was sorry to 

* Gales and Seaton's Congressional Debates, 1835-6, p. 
744, part 1. 



174 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

"hear that declaration. It was too plainly as- 
" serted that those who happened to live north 
" of a given line would be regarded as unworthy 
"of political trust, from the mere fact that they 
" resided in a non-slave-holding country. Such a 
" sentiment illy comports with the magnanimity, 
" the love of justice, which has uniformly char- 
" acterized the South." The vote was taken in a 
very full Senate ; there were, at that time, twenty- 
four States, and of the forty-eight Senators, all 
but eight were present and voted; Mr. Calhoun, 
though present, refused to vote, his own motion, 
which was that the petition be not received, 
having been defeated. By this debate it most 
distinctly appears that at this time, 1836, the 
agitation on which party soon after rode into power 
was regarded as too disgraceful ever to have the 
countenance of honest men and good citizens. 
Comparing it with the debates at Washington 
twenty-five years later, and the declaration of 
principles of the party which met twenty-five 
years later at Chicago to nominate a President, 
it is. plain, in the prodigious change of tone pro- 
duced by agitation merely, what was a crime 
having grown to be a virtue, that agitation would 
have done the work of emancipation without the 
assistance of the war. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 175 



SECTION VII I. 

AGITATION. 

The North, in 1836, reasoned as the South did 
in 1860, that union was impossible if the agitation 
went on ; that to appeal from the constitutional 
guarantees of this most uncertain of all possessions, 
to the natural, necessary, inevitable prejudices of 
every human being, and on such agitation to plant 
party engines and establish political doctrine, must 
be fatal. It was not the enactment of new laws 
that was feared; it was agitation. Abolition of 
the slave-trade in the District of Columbia was 
but what one of the Virginia delegation, Mr. Ran- 
dolph, called for, twenty years before, in the House 
of Representatives, and had a committee raised to 
inquire into ; and as to slavery in the Territories, 
it was a grave subject, and Mr. Monroe's cabinet, 
principally Southern men, ruled it, in 1820, unan- 
imously against the more Southern view. Were 
agitation organized against the citizen who ad- 
hered to the religion of his fathers, it would be 
vain to assure him he had the protection of the 
Constitution. Against agitation, he would answer, 
there can be no protection. 

Moral strength and moral weakness are the 



176 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

mo8t absolute of all strengths and of all weak- 
nesses. Even the strength of war was said by a 
great commander to be made up of five elements, 
of which three were moral, and two physical. Of 
Southern slavery the moral weakness was incura- 
ble. It had arrayed against it universal opinion, 
and of none more than the South themselves. 
When Mr. Everett declared in debate, in the 
House of Representatives, that the relation of 
master and slave in his sentiment was not im- 
moral, the rebuke came from Virginia, and it was 
severe, that a Northern man was not to be envied 
such a sentiment as that. 

The law of slavery was submitted to the Su- 
preme Court and decided. Agitation arose against 
the Court, threats to abolish the Court, to abridge 
its jurisdiction, to alter the tenure of the judges.* 

* If this case had been decided, instead of in 1856, before 
the Missouri question prepared the ground for that agitation 
which, finally, was pressed to war between the States, it 
would have passed unchallenged. The views taken of the 
negro race, and their relations to citizens of the States, and 
the United States, are simply those to be found everywhere 
in our history, social and political, at any time before the 
period when party seized upon the subject for purposes of 
its own. It had been debated with all that zeal common to 
newspapers and popular assemblies ; and when the law and 
facts, which had been cast to and fro, came to be treated 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 177 

The decision, like that of any human tribunal, 
may have been right, or may have been wrong; 

judicially, and political party saw every point, which they 
had so noisily insisted on, quietly settled by the law and the 
book, and settled against them, and against what they chose 
to consider the rules of humanity and justice, the rage of 
agitation knew no bounds. 

Mr. Taney's first predecessor in the Chief-Justiceship was 
Mr. Jay; appointed by Washington ; an admirable man, and 
of strong religious sentiments. He was President of a soci- 
ety established in New York early in 1785, "for promoting 
"the manumission of slaves, and protecting such of them as 
"have been or may be liberated." His opinions on domestic 
slavery were of the extremest kind. In 1780, during the 
war, he wrote to a friend (Life of John Jay, by his son, 
William Jay, vol. i. p. 229), " Till America comes into this 
" measure" (the gradual abolition of slavery) " her prayers 
" to heaven for liberty will be impious. This is a strong ex- 
"pression, but it is just." But he thought that the question 
of the " manumission of slaves" was subject to that of the 
laws of the country, and even to that of men's comfort and 
convenience, as in the days of Christ, and by his commands. 
"In the year 1798," says his son and biographer (Life of 
John Jay, by his son, William Jay, vol. i. p. 235), " being 
" called on by the United States marshal for an account of his 
" taxable property, he accompanied a list of his slaves with the 
"following observations: 'I purchased slaves and manumit 
" 'them at proper ages, and when their faithful services shall 
"'have afforded a reasonable retribution.' As free servants 
" became more common," pursues his biographer, " be was 
"gradually relieved from the necessity of purchasing slaves." 



178 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

but here was the Law, the judgment of a court of 
competent jurisdiction. 

SECTION IX. 

THE PRESIDENCY. 

There has been much unprofitable debate 
whether the South did not aggravate the slavery 
agitation by their mistaken violence. Calmness 
under aggression may soothe, or it may provoke ; 
but the first and the great mistake of the South 
was in the Missouri Compromise, before the final 
day of agitation came. The vaulting ambition of 
Mr. Douglas repealed the Missouri Compromise 
in 1854. It had been always threatening us, but 
the repeal was instant mischief When the South 
gave up such a fast-anchored principle as State 
equality, to fall back on a dogma so difficult as 
that on which the Southern delegations broke up 
the Charleston convention,* they abandoned a po- 
sition that was impregnable, to retire in quest of 
what was nowhere to be found. The Northern 
Senators of 1836 did not know the weakness of 

* The right to establish the law of slavery in a Territory 
by carrying a single slave there, which was casuistry, and 
could come to nothing, though it were constitutional law. In 
this empty principle, and the elaboration of it, was the weak- 
ness of the Dred Scott decision. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 179 

their constituents ; they did not know democracy 
was destined to ebb till the people would have 
but one duty, that of making Presidents. Polit- 
ical justice, shadowy at best, vanished before the 
question of the Presidency. A topic for agitation 
going, every fourth year, to the extrernest vio- 
lence, slavery was an anvil on which every candi- 
date hammered out his pretensions. The question 
of slavery would have remained within the body 
of the States, each, in peace, resolving it for itself, 
had not the wave of agitation rolled it over the 
Union. The enemies of the constitutional guar- 
antees of slavery, regarded as madmen, were the 
contemptuous and avowed foes of union on any 
other terms than those of immediate and indis- 
criminate manumission of the slaves. The poli- 
ticians stood aloof from them, denied their princi- 
ples, professed an abhorrence of their purposes, but 
availed themselves of the political uses of their agi- 
tation Slavery, now a dead lion which every ass 
may kick, then was a power founded in the Consti- 
tution, figuring in the laws, represented in Congress, 
warranted by the practice of virtuous communities 
and the lives and virtues of the best and noblest 
of our statesmen ; and abolitionism was a scandal 
disayowed by all but a few fanatics. But with its 
help was to be secured Executive patronage. 



180 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

In vain did the South, steady to its principles, 
agricultural and unchanged, for the South of 1860 
was the South of the day of Washington, some- 
times in the language of fury, sometimes of reason 
and remonstrance, appeal to justice, to humanity, 
to the compact of the States, to the necessities of 
their position ; slavery was a target never taken 
down, and on it every blow told. The North, the 
seat of populous cities, and of much of the wealth 
and industry of the world, was no longer the North 
of 1787. The South was the same South, the 
North was another North; its interests, habits, 
occupations, all had changed. The plantations, 
rural life, and patriarchal existence of the South, 
not a Northern man in a thousand had even seen, 
or wanted to see, still less had formed any just 
idea of 

Our astonishment knew no bounds when, in the 
civil war, the feelings of almost all the world were 
found to be with the slave-holders ;* but the great 

* It is common to flatter ourselves that this was a merely 
aristocratic feeling, and hatred of democracy; but it was 
also general irrepressible disgust at injustice. In the " Per- 
" sonal Life of George Grote," the historian, a republican in 
principle, and strongly opposed to slavery, the author, who 
is his widow, says (p. 314), "He once said in conversing 
"with myself, in 1867, about the United States, 'I have out- 
" ' lived my faith in the efficacy of republican government 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 181 

pulse of mankind beats generously, and against 
the wronger. 

In 1844 the abolitionists first put forward a 
candidate for the Presidency. He received in the 
whole country, so hateful were their doctrines, 
and so fearful of contamination were even the 
most unscrupulous party managers, only sixty-six 
thousand three hundred and sixty-four votes. In 
1856, twelve years later, these fanatics were joined 
in their combinations, preparatory to the coming 
election, and afterwards at the polls, by the greedy 
leaders of the opposition to the party then gov- 
erning the country. This alliance took place 
after a change of leaders, and till then was im- 
possible, but it was the beginning of the final 
triumph. United, they received one million three 
hundred and forty-one thousand eight hundred 
and twelve votes, a large minority of the vote of 
the Union ; the fearful shadow of coming events. 
At the next election of a President, in 1860, the 

" 'regarded as a check upon the vulgar passions in a nation, 
" ' and I recognize the fact that supreme power lodged in 
" ' their hands may be exercised quite as mischievously as by 
"'a despotic ruler like the first Napoleon. The conduct of 
" ' the Northern States in the late conflict with the Southern 
" ' States has led me to this conclusion, though it costs me 
" ' much to avow it, even to myself.' " 



182 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

candidate of these combined interests succeeded ; 
making good Mr. Jefferson's prediction that what 
he called the 7ioise would be kept up till the object 
should be effected of choosing a President by geo- 
graphical lines ; he polled a plurality of the votes. 
They were sectionally divided, and democracy 
passed into its darkest eclipse. If it could not 
maintain the Union, what could it do ? It had 
failed in the simplest of its functions. 

SECTION X. 

THE SLAVERY AGITATION NOT DEMOCRATIC MADNESS, BUT DEMO- 
CRATIC WEAKNESS. 

Democracy failed through weakness, not passion. 
Passion is sometimes noble, and it is always re- 
spected. Lulled with assurances that no harm 
was meant, that the Union and the Constitution 
were dear to all alike, to venal politicians as much 
as to themselves, the people lent their votes. 
Against those fierce associates of the politicians to 
whom they lent them, conspirators who wore no 
disguise, unhesitating wretches, the people had 
been warned by every statesman, without one 
single exception, who ever had their willing con- 
fidence. Not only had they been warned; they 
had accepted the warning, and promised them- 
selves to profit by it. But they slept on the vol- 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 183 

cano. It was the sleep of childhood or of folly, 
which keeps no watch. They left everything to 
the office-seekers till roused from their dreams by 
the cannon at Fort Sumter.* 

A man may be loaded with crime ; a govern- 
ment may be nearly as bad; but a people are never 
base or false. Nobody ever heard of a people 
who, knowingly, united in an act of cowardice or 
cruelty. They are deceived. The atrocities of the 
French Revolution were not the work of the people, 
but of a few hundreds of them, who abused the 
weakness of all the rest ; and the people of the 
United States, when they lent themselves to the 
anti-slavery agitation, were weaker than the French 
when they lent themselves to the work of the guil- 
lotine. An unenlightened people might, in igno- 

* The same slowness to the sense of danger that was ex- 
hibited between 1836 and the year 1860, when the war broke 
out, was again exhibited between the year 1864, when the 
war ended, and 1876. We would not meddle unnecessarily 
with party matters, but may be allowed to observe on the 
fact, one where parties agreed, that the abuses which fol- 
lowed the war were altogether monstrous ; yet till the 
autumn elections of 1874 the people, though perfectly sensi- 
ble to them, wholly omitted to take measures for their cure. 
It was not blindness of the people ; it was only that democ- 
racy when it does not do its duty, and leaves it to others to 
do, is trifled with. 



184 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

ranee or stupidity, transfer power to a single hand ; 
but, as an act of weakness, it would not be more 
preposterous than that of the educated and intel- 
ligent citizens of the United States when they put 
themselves in the power of the abolitionists. 

The situation in 1860 was democracy painted 
by its enemies ; the people practised on, and their 
peace destroyed. When their eyes opened, they 
called for settlement with the South. This was 
the call; and it was well-nigh unanimous. But 
lo ! without the change of one vote in either house 
of Congress ! When an English minister arrays 
his force in Parliament against the country, his 
votes begin to leave him ; but not one Senator, not 
one Representative in the whole American Con- 
gress heeded the loud cry of the American people. 

SECTION XI. 

THE PEOPLE. 

When we look back to acknowledge it was, 
in the race for Executive patronage and on pre- 
tences disavowed, when the danger arose, by all 
but those who never flinched, that small men and 
small ambitions brought a people so flourishing 
and happy as we were to seeming ruin ; the Union 
going to pieces, and not a man left whose head was 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 185 

high enough above the crowd to command atten- 
tion and a hearing, democracy must be admitted 
to appear in its meanest light. There were neither 
leaders nor citizens. No leaders, because there 
were no citizens ; no citizens, because citizenship 
had left the care of the country to party in its 
worst form. The people had no influence ; the 
rabble of office-seekers played a game for their 
places, with no regard to the people ; staking party 
success for, the people knew not what, and, as 
eventually proved, for the establishment of princi- 
ples which had been by the people detested in the 
past, and, now, were condemned by them in their 
loudest tones. 

The law of self-preservation may be badly ad- 
ministered, but it regulates every society. The 
South saw in the slavery agitation their peace 
ruined, their property gone, their personal safety 
imperilled, their approaching total destruction ; and 
they sought relief in revolution.* The North saw 

* The discourse, already quoted, of Mr. John Quincy 
Adams, before the Historical Society of New York, deliv- 
ered in 1839, and which may be said to be ultra in some of 
the views there expressed in derogation of State rights, when 
the speaker comes to the question, that of revolution, which 
arose with the slave States twenty years later, holds this 
language: "In the calm hours of self-possession, the right 
"of a Slate to nullify an act of Congress is too absurd for 

13 



186 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

in Southern secession the wreck of the country. 
But so paltry had become the populous North, 

" argument, and too odious for discussion. The right of a 
" State to secede from the Union, is equally disowned by 
"the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Nations 
"acknowledge no judge between them upon earth, and their 
" Governments, from necessity, must in their intercourse with 
"each other decide when the failure of one party to a con- 
" tract to perform its obligations, absolves the other from the 
" reciprocal fulfilment of his own. But this last of earthly 
"powers is not necessary to the freedom or independence 
" of States, connected together by the immediate action of the 
"people, of whom they consist. To the people alone is there 
"reserved, as well the dissolving, as the constituent power, 
"and that power can be exercised by them only under the 
" tie of conscience, binding them to the retributive justice 
" of Heaven. 

" With these qualifications, we may admit the same right 
"as vested in the jjeople of every State in the Union, with 
"reference to the General Government, which was exercised 
"by the people of the United Colonies, with reference to the 
" supreme head of the British empire, of which they formed 
" a part — and under these limitations have the people of each 
" State in the Union a right to secede from the confederated 
" Union itself 

" Thus stands the RIGHT (sic). But the indissoluble 
" link of union between the people of the several States of 
"this confederated nation is, after all, not in the right, but 
" in the heart. If the day should ever come, (may Heaven 
" avert it,) when the affections of the people of these States 
"shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 187 

that no Northern party, and not one Northern 
leader of party, demanded armed resistance of the 

" spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collisions of 
"interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political asso- 
" ciation will not long hold together parties no longer attracted 
"by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sym- 
"pathies; and far better will it be for the people of the dis- 
" united States to part in friendship from each other, than to 
" be held together by constraint. Then will be the time for 
" reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation 
" and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more per- 
" feet union, by dissolving that which could no longer l)ind, 
" and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law 
" of political gravitation to tlie centre." 

The day did come; Heaven did not avert it ; fraternal spirit 
did give way, and with good reason ; for uo men who had 
either feelings or interests would have borne longer with 
peril and provocation than the slave-holding States. But 
when Mr. Adams says, " far better will it be for the disunited 
" States to part in friendship from each other," in order to 
establish his conclusion, he ought to have shown where the 
friendship was to come from when once there was disunion. 
When the Union is dissolved, all is over, and war is at hand. 
There can be no other practical view of the case of disunion. 
The affair of Fort Sumter did nothing but put the South in 
the wrong, and precipitate what was inevitable, at last. If 
Mr. Buchanan had used his armed force by land and sea, as 
Jackson did in 1832, to py^event war, though the case was 
more difficult, probably, there would have been none in 1861, 
more than in 1832; and if it had come, being a war in the 
Union, both sides lighting for the same flag, it would have 



188 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

Southern movement. Had it not been accompa- 
nied by insult the most gross, as well as injury 
the deepest, war, inevitable at last, would have 
been postponed. The cry in the North was that 
the enemy was not in the South, but in their midst; 
and had not the attack upon Fort Sumter given 
another direction to popular fury, it would have 
vented itself on the authors of the agitation. Had 
democracy come, and with no better reason than a 
scramble for office, to this contemptible condition 
of helpless disorder which the aristocratic world 
had longed to see, and, longing for, predicted? 

If Mr. Crittenden had possessed an influence 
commensurate with his ability and the purity and 
earnestness of the effort he made, at the close of 
his long senatorial life, he might have been spared 
the tears of grief and indignation he is said to 
have shed when his resolutions were voted down. 

been a quarrel among the States, open to settlement, and not 
of foreign countries, government against government, as it 
became from 1861 to 1864. No citizen can love a govern- 
ment which he despises; and the government of the United 
States became despicable under the doctrine of the uncon- 
stitutionality of M''hat was called coercion. Would not there 
have been coercion in 1814? Were not, backed by South 
and North, the government of the United States in actual 
readiness to prevent the secession of the States which met at 
Hartford in that vear ? 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 189 

How enduring their effects, if the people were still 
to be nothing, and their power to remain in the 
keeping of the few, might be a question; but it 
was not a question for the members of Congress. 
They could have put forth their hands and stayed 
the mischief It is not the place of statesmen to 
stand by and let their country perish ; they must 
prevent ruin to-day, and take to-morrow as it comes, 
and its uncertainties with it. If uncertainty were 
not a point of departure, why did Northern states- 
men leave their country to that miserable lottery in 
which they drew war? why did Southern statesmen 
tempt their fellow-citizens to such a game as war, 
against all the probabilities of Northern strength, 
wealth, and population ? 



SECTION XII. 

THE OUTGOING EXECUTIVE. 

As, when the life of a monarch is ebbing, his 
authority wanes, and, before his eyes are closed, 
the reign of his successor begins, so in the United 
States, when the administration is beaten at the 
polls in November, and the President to lay down 
his office at a fast-approaching hour, a portion of his 
power becomes illusion ; it passes to the President 
elect. The party that governs loses the power; 



190 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

the party that gets it does not govern. When Mr. 
Adams was superseded by Mr. Jefferson in 1800, 
this unavoidable defect of our institutions ap- 
peared; and again in 1824, when Jackson super- 
seded the younger Adams. But more disastrously 
did it produce itself in 1861, when Mr. Lincoln 
was coming in. Neither the outgoing nor the in- 
coming President was a man for the emergency ; 
neither of them a self-reliant spirit : one, a states- 
man who filled with honour so many places, to fail 
in the highest ; the other, of the order of men who 
fill places in their native village. His elevation to 
the Presidency seemed to justify the very worst 
fears entertained for democracy in 1787. Mr. Buch- 
anan, loaded with responsibility for the faults of 
every administration since 1824, a scapegoat who 
bore into the wilderness the sins, not of the past 
year but of thirty years, in his message at the open- 
ing of the session, said he left all to Congress. He 
declared himself powerless to save the country, or 
even to diminish its dangers. The impartial pos- 
terity to whose judgment, in the shades of his 
retirement, he appealed from the too clamorous 
injustice of his cotemporaries will never absolve 
him from a fault not the least of political faults, 
that of want of energy and decision. 

From a President whose power was just expiring, 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 191 

who had been constantly, during his whole term, 
leaning to the South and from the North, when 
he ought to have been rallying the North and con- 
trolling the South; who stood in dismay, when the 
accumulating demands on his courage ought to 
have carried it to its highest point, little was 
looked for. His opponents were counting the 
minutes of his political life ; those who were to 
exercise the power of the new administration were 
impatient to assume the reins of it ; and such was 
the eagerness for place, they not only seemed to be 
unaware of the greatness of the peril, but actually 
they were indifferent to it. War they did not be- 
lieve was near, still less did they know what it 
was ; and the aroused passions of thirty millions 
of people were unthought of. Thirst for office had 
extinguished the love of country, and, with it, of 
sound reason. The talk was of the rio;ht and 
wrong of secession, and of the right and wrong 
of coercion ; as if secession was not revolution, and 
coercion war. 

Secession of the single State of South Carolina 
would have been war, and foreign war as well as 
domestic, for they must have sought foreign pro- 
tection. When our minister at Paris, conferring 
with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, told him 
that the orovernment of the United States was one 



192 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

of public opinion, and knew no law of force against 
a State, and tliere would be no war, French diplo- 
macy must have smiled. There would be no decla- 
ration of war ; but the most inveterate war is that 
which is waged without any declaration of it. 

SECTION XIII. 

MR. SEWAPvD. 

The troubles of 1814 and 1833 were casual and 
local ; they were the effervescent passions of a dis- 
turbed industry. In 1814 the country was already 
in arms against a foreign enemy, and the govern- 
ment stood prepared for the movement of New 
England; and in 1833 the movement of South 
Carolina had to deal with a government at the 
head of which was Jackson. In 1860 the whole 
body of democracy was sick. 

The elevation to power at such a time of a man 
so unknown as Mr. Lincoln was one of the evi- 
dences that public interests were not in the ha.nds 
of the people. It was not the first time the Pres- 
idency had been given to a man the people never 
heard of. 

The new President, in his Inaugural Address, 
brought forward his remedy ; it was to submit, not 
altogether, but partially, to secession ! If, not Mr. 



TIIK AMEKICAN TOINT OF VIEW. 193 

Lincoln had been the choice of the convention 
which met at Chicago, but Mr. Seward, as he so 
nearly was, he would have submitted altogether; 
but this Mr. Lincoln was too weak to do. He 
would have yielded every point necessary to en- 
able him to carry on a government. A man of 
expediencies, to insure his enjoyment of power he 
would have surrendered at discretion, as he sur- 
rendered to England when he gave up the pas^sen- 
gers by the Trent; as he wanted to surrender to 
South Carolina when they called for Fort Sumter. 
Agitation had done its work, and, Union or no 
Union, the question, now, was to administer a 
government. Mr. Seward thought nothing had 
happened that ought to make that impossible ; 
and even designated a time, three months distant, 
for the return of quiet. What was done could be 
undone, what was said could be unsaid. He said, 
at Rochester, in 1858,* "Shall I tell you what 
"this collision means? ... It is an irrepressible 
"conflict between opposing and enduring forces." 
He said at Washington, in January, 1861,f "The 

* Rochester speech, as quoted ia Greeley's "American 
Conflict," vol. i. p. 301. 

f Speech in the Senate, January 12, 1861. (See Congres- 
sional Globe, 1860-61, p. 341.) This speech, which so packed 
the Senate-chamber, floors, galleries, corridors, and every 



194 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" dififerent forms of labour, if slavery were not per- 
" verted to purposes of political ambition, need 

accessible spot, that they had to be cleared of all but privi- 
leged persons strictly within the standing order, before Mr. 
Seward could go on, and was instantly telegraphed to every 
corner of the country, was read with a more universal curi- 
osity and intense interest than any speech ever delivered in 
the United States, or, probably, in any state or country; for 
it was to let men into the secret of their destiny, at an 
hour when, to the common mind, it was inscrutable. Alas, 
it was nothing but a eulogy of the Union! an admission, in 
one already quoted short sentence, of the falsehood of the 
agitation which had brought the Union to dissolution. Mr. 
Seward, a man of ability, if not a statesman, a shrewd poli- 
tician, was as much the leader of his party as ever Mr. Clay 
was ; he may be said to have founded, as Hamilton did 
the federal, and Jefferson the democratic party, the party 
of political abolitionism, that is, of anti-slavery agitation to 
political ends. It had just elected a President, not himself a 
man of experience and capacity, the situation was too gross 
for that, but Mr. Lincoln, and Mr. Lincoln had chosen Mr. 
Seward to pilot his administration. Before he left his seat 
in the Senate, he was to dispel the fears and doubts that 
hung so thickly over us. It was expected to learn from Mr. 
Seward, Who had pronounced alarm to be unnecessary, that 
in sixty or ninety days the country would be relieved of its 
anxieties. But the wizard who raised the storm could only 
call for patience, and pronounce the praise of that patriotic 
and perfect calmness which goes with a supreme love of 
country, and he said he meant to adhere to, happen wliat 
might ! This would have been glorious, indeed, had he 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 195 

" not constitute an element of" strife in the Con- 
federacy." 

represented the injured party ; but, standing where lie did, 
was cunning or folly, and never was public disappointment 
more complete. In his Rochester speech, less than two 
years before, he said, " Either the cotton- and rice-lields of 
"South Carolina, and the sugar plantations of Louisiana, 
" will ultimately be tilled by free labour, and Charleston and 
" New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise 
" alone, or else the rye-fields and wheat-fields of Massachu- 
" setts and New York must again be surrendered by their 
" farmers to slave culture and to the production of slaves, and 
" Boston and New York become once more markets for trade 
"in the bodies and souls of men." This most preposterous 
falsehood came from no vulgar orator, who might say any- 
thing to get a cheer, but a great leader, whose words were 
measured. "These antagonistic systems," he continued, 
meaning slave and free labour, "are continually coming into 
" closer contact, and collision results. Shall I tell you what 
" this collision means ? They who think that it is accidental, 
" unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, 
"and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It 
"is an irrepresi^ible conflict between opposing and enduring 
" forces. ... It is the failure to apprehend this great truth 
"that induces so many unsuccessful attempts at final cum- 
" promise between the slave and free States; and it is the 
" existence of this great fact that renders all such pretended 
"compromises, when made, vain and ephemeral." What, 
when they came to powQr, would the party do, whose chief 
held such language ? They had power now ; how would they 
use it? What would keep them in place, and elect their 



196 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 



SECTION XIV. 

CONGKESS. 

The annals of a free State are to be read in the 
proceedings of its Legislative Assemblies. Cabi- 
nets deceive, but Legislative debate cannot de- 
ceive, though carried on by the falsest of men. 
Li the lower house of Congress the crisis was met 
with vain clamour and the vile oratory of party. 
Healing measures were neither seriously debated 
nor fairly voted on ; the extreme disorder that 
prevailed, and an obvious recklessness, admonished 
the country of its approaching end. Li the Senate, 
the leading men of the South gave just as much 
aid to the Union as was necessary to their standing 
with their constituents at home. Of the Northern 
Senators, every man who adhered to the incoming 
administration voted against any measures which 
might imperil party ascendency. 

President at the expiration of four years ? Plainly, the same 
agitation, not the "work of interested or fanatical agitators, 
"and therefore ephemeral," but an "irrepressible conflict." 
The minister of a monarch may blow hot and cold, but can 
the minister of the people ? Are they fools ? If there was 
no reason why the different forms of labour should constitute 
an element of strife in the Confederacy, then the Rochester 
speech party meant to drive the Southern States from the 
Union on false pretences. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF YIEW. 197 

The new party was ruled by those fierce spirits, 
haters of the Union, who had driven it to the 
precij^ice over which it was now their desire to 
see it go ; and their allies, the office-seekers, could 
see, at the bottom of the pit, no safety for them- 
selves so sure as in separation from the Southern 
States. Every scheme of settlement failed. That 
of Mr. Crittenden, which was sustained by a more 
earnest and eager demand by the population of 
the United States than any public measure ever 
had from the American people, may be said to 
have arrested the attention of Congress. It was 
promptly rejected in the House by a vote of eighty 
ayes to one hundred and thirteen nays.* Its main 
feature was the Missouri Compromise line extended 
to the Pacific. In the Senate, where it had a hear- 
ing, every Senator, with not a single exception, of 
the party M^hich had elevated to power the in- 
coming President, put his negative on the Crit- 
tenden settlement. It was four times voted on. 

1. The resolutions were, on the 15th of January, 
refused a preference over the Pacific Railroad bill ! 
The vote was twenty-one to twenty-seven .f 

* Congressional Globe, February 21, 1861, p. 1261. 

f Yeas. — Messrs. Benjamin, Bigler, Bragg, Bright, Cling- 
man, Crittenden, Fitch, Green, Hemphill, Johnson of Ten- 
nessee, Kennedy, Lane, Mason, Nicholson, Pearce, Polk, 



198 FEARS FOR PEMOCRACY REGARDED >FROM 

2. The next day, the 16th of January, Mr. 
Clark, of New Hampshire, moved an amendment 
to Mr. Crittenden's resolutions, declaring settle- 
ment unnecessary. The vote on Mr. Clark's 
amendment was — yeas twenty-five, nays twenty- 
three.* 

3. Mr. Cameron, who for a moment seemed to 
relent, on the 18th of January moved a reconsid- 
eration of the vote on Mr. Clark's amendment, 
when every Republican Senator voted against the 
reconsideration. Mr. Cameron said, " My motion 
'' was made to accommodate the Senator from Ken- 
" tucky ; but I shall vote with my friends on this 

Powell, Pugh, Rice, Saulsbury, and Slidell. — 21. Nays. — 
Messrs. Anthony, Baker, Bingham, Cameron, Chandler, 
Clark, Collamer, Dixon, Doolittle, Durkee, Fessenden, Foot, 
Foster, Grimes, Gwin, Hale, Harlan, King, Latham, Seward, 
Simmons, Sumner, Ten Eyck, Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson, 
and Wilson.— 2t. (Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 381.) 

* Yeas. — Messrs. Anthony, Baker, Bingham, Cameron, 
Chandler, Clark, Collamer, Dixon, Doolittle, Diirkee, Fessen- 
den, Foot, Foster, Grimes, Hale, Harlan, King, Seward, 
Simmons, Sumner, Ten Fiyck, Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson, 
and Wilson. — 25. Nays. — Messrs. Bayard, Bigler, Bragg, 
Bright, Clingman, Crittenden, Fitch, Green, Gwin, Hunter, 
Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy, Lane, Latham, Mason, 
Nicholson, Pearce, Polk, Powell, Pugh, Rice, Saulsbury, 
and Sebastian.— 23. (Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 409.) 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 199 

" side." The vote was — yeas twenty-seven, nays 
twenty-four.* 

4. The 4th of March, Mr. Crittenden's resolu- 
tions, coming up for final consideration, failed, on 
a direct vote ; every Republican Senator voting 
against them. Yeas nineteen, nays twenty .f 

The Senators from the States which immediately 
after seceded agreed to accept the settlement, if 
also accepted by the party of the incoming Presi- 
dent, thus giving to the measure some hold on the 
country. Mr. Douglas said, addressing the Senate, 

* Yeas. — Messrs. Bayard, Bigler, Bragg, Bright, Clingman, 
Crittenden, Douglas, Fitch, Green, Gvviu, Hemphill, Hunter, 
Johnson of Arkansas, Joluison of Tennessee, Kennedy, Lane, 
Latham, Mason, Nicholson, Pearce, Polk, Powell, Pugh, 
Rice, Saulsbury, Sebastian, and Slidell. — 27. jSTays. — 
Messrs. Anthony, Baker, Bingham, Cameron, Chandler, 
Clark, Collamer, Dixon, Doolittle, Fessendeti, Foot, Foster, 
Grimes, Hale, Harlan, King, Seward, Simmons, Sumner, 
Ten Eyck, Wade, Wigfall, Wilkinson, aud Wilson.— 24. 
(Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 443.) 

f Yeas. — Messrs. Bayard, Bigler, Bright, Crittenden, 
Douglas, Gwin, Hunter, Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy, 
Lane, Latham, Mason, Nicholson, Polk, Pugh, Rice, Sebas- 
tian, Thompson, and Wigfall. — 19. Nays. — Messrs. An- 
thony, Biugliam, Chandler, Clark, Dixon, Doolittle, Durkee, 
Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Grimes, Harlan, King, Morrill, 
Sumner, Ten Eyck, Trumbull, Wade, Wilkiuson, and Wil- 
son.— 20. (Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 1405.) 



200 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

on the 3d of January, " If you of the Republican 
" side are not willing to accept this, nor the propo- 
" sition of the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Critten- 
''den), pray tell us what you are willing to do. I 
" address the inquiry to the Republicans alone, for 
" the reason that in the committee of thirteen, a 
" few days ago, every member from the South, in- 
" eluding those from the cotton States (Messrs. 
" Toombs and Davis), expressed their readiness to 
" accept the proposition of my venerable friend 
" from Kentucky (Mr. Crittenden) as a final set- 
" tlement of the controversy, if tendered and sus- 
" tained by the Republican members. Hence the 
"sole responsibility of our disagreement, and the 
"only difficulty in the way of an amicable adjust- 
" ment, is with the Republican party."* 

Mr. Pugh said to them two months later, the 2d 
of March, "The Crittenden proposition has been 
" endorsed by the almost unanimous vote of the 
" Legislature of Kentucky. It has been endorsed 
" by the Legislature of the noble old Common- 
" wealth of Virginia. It has been petitioned for 
, " by a larger number of electors of the United 
" States than any proposition that was ever before 
"Congress I believe in my heart, to-day, that it 
" would carry an overwhelming majority of the 

* Congressional Globe, 1860-61, Appendix, page 41. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 201 

'' people of my State ; aye, sir, and of nearly every 
" other State in the Union. Before the Senators 
''of the State of Mississippi left this chamber, I 
" heard one of them, who now assumes, at least, to 
" be President of the Southern Confederacy, pro- 
"pose to accept it and to maintain the Union if 
" that proposition could receive the vote it ought 
" to receive from the other side of this chamber."* 
Governor Bigler, who took an active part in the 
effort in the Senate,f some time after leaving his 
seat, in a letter addressed to a number of his im- 
mediate fellow-citizens, who had written to him for 
information touching the position taken by the 
Senators from the seceding States, said, in his 
letter published in the newspapers of the 28th of 
April, 1863, "It is not true that some Republican 
" members of the Senate supported the Crittenden 
"Compromise, and some opposed it. They opposed 
"it throughout, and without an exception. Their 
"efforts to defeat it were in the usual shape of 

* Congressional Globe, 1860-61, page 1390. 

f Mr. Crittenden said of him, in his final speech ou bis 
resolutions, that of the 2d of March, " I shall never forget 
"the zeal and the industry with which my honourable and 
" my honoured friend from Pennsylvania has acted in this 
" great matter. With a zeal untiring, and a hope inexhaust- 
"ible, he has toiled on from day to day, with a labour that 
"no other one, scarcely, could have borne." 

14 



202 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" postponements and amendments, and it was not 
" until within a few hours of the close of the ses- 
" sion, that a direct vote was had on the propo- 
" sition itself" 

SECTION XV. 

NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN DEMOCRACY. 

The South looked upon Northern democracy 
as the members of the convention of '87 looked 
upon all democracy, with fear; and surely no dis- 
ciple of Mr. Jefferson could have witnessed, with- 
out profound apprehension, the withdrawal, from 
whatever cause, of such numbers of the substantial 
classes of the North from all care of the public 
interests. The South had been told, by an unani- 
mous Senate, when the Cain Petition was pre- 
sented, in 1836, that the whole North abhorred 
the doctrines of the abolitionists ; but what avail 
the abhorrences of those who vote for what they 
abhor ? 

With fears of Northern democracy went a dis- 
position to disparage it. Since the death of Mr. 
Hamilton, the North had not produced one ac- 
knowledged leader; they all came from slave- 
holding States. Webster was a great mind, but 
not a leader; Douglas, who would have been a 
leader, died before his time. 



TllE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 203 

Southern democracy was said to turn on slavery; 
but that was the Constitution of the United States. 
In the North, it turned too often on the con- 
trivances of politicians, cries against slavery, cries 
against secret societies, cries for secret societies, 
cries against foreign votes, cries against religious 
sects. 

Tlie Southern stand was real ; it represented a 
great interest; that of the North represented the 
machinations of office-seekers. But when, to get 
place, they joined their fortunes to fanatics, men 
cherishing a hate, stirred by a passion, they fell 
under an influence more potent than their own, 
and stronger than the thirst of office; and they 
became controlled by those they meant only to 
use. Mischiefs came thicker and faster tlian they 
wanted, but it was too late to stop; and political 
morals were gone. The country had been long 
in the hands of middle-men, an influence that is 
always ruinous. The citizen could not rise by 
serving government or people ; he had to serve a 
middle interest, rulers of conventions, which had 
mastered them both and cared for neither. Mr. 
Lincoln cared for the country, for he was its chief 
magistrate; but the members of the Chicago con- 
vention did not, and to them he had to answer. 
Franklin's sagacity saw that patronage was to 



204 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

make Executive power a danger to the State ; but 
not that it was to give us a combination of the 
seekers of patronage, who, choosing the Executive, 
would make responsibility to themselves, instead 
of to the people, a condition of their choice ; still 
less that a feeling, which can be compared only 
to religious fury, was to enter into the question, 
and predominate over even the appetite for place. 

SECTION XVI. 

PREPAEATIONS FOE DISUNION. 

The slave-holding States looked not to Congress 
for a cessation of the clamour which imperilled the 
lives, destroyed the property, and exhausted the 
patience of their part of the country. Congress 
had no such power. They asked what Congress 
could give when they asked equal rights in the ac- 
quired territory ; and this as an empty acknowl- 
edgment, for there was no acquired territory, or 
almost none, which slave labour could cultivate ; 
but to give this would seem to be a truce.* The 

* The Senators who voted against the Crittenden Compro- 
mise said very little in opposition to it. It had not the ben- 
efit of debate. But Mr. Horace Greeley, in his work, " The 
American Conflict," vol. i. pp. 378-381, debates it, as they 
would not in the Senate, and candidly avows as a main ob- 
jection to it that agitation was to be given up. This, the true 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 205 

attitude of the South was despair; it may have 
been exaggerated by passion, but it was unnffected 

objection, Mr. Greeley thus states: "IV. As a part of this 
"compact, the North was to silence lier lecturers, muzzle her 
" press, chloroform her pulpits, and bully her people into a 
"silence respecting slavery, which should be broken only 
"by the utterances of vindication and panegyrics. Already 
"the great publishing houses of our Northern cities had been 
"very generally induced to mutilate the works they from 
" time to time issued by expunging from them every passage 
"or sentiment obnoxious to the fastidious, exacting taste of 
"the slave-holders. Some of our authors — Mr. James K. 
" Paulding conspicuous among them — had revised their own 
" works, and issued new editions wherein their old-time 
" utterances adverse to slavery had been supplanted by ful- 
" some adulations of the system, or vehement abuse of its 
" opponents. Our missionary, tract, and other religious or- 
" ganizations had very generally been induced to expurgate 
" their publications and their efforts of all anti-slavery ideas. 
" Our great popular churches had either bent to the storm or 
" been broken by it. And now the work was to be completed 
"by a new and comprehensive 'adjustment,' taking the place 
" and, in part, the name of that ' compromise' which the slave 
" power had first forced upon the North and then coolly repu- 
" diated ; an adjustment which was to bind the free States 
" over to perpetual complicity in slave-holding, and perpetual 
" stifling of all exposure of, or remonstrance against, the ex- 
"istence, the domination, and the diffusion of slavery. These 
"strictures are neither impelled or colored by any unkindly 
" feeling towards Mr. Crittenden, whose patriotism and fair- 
" ness they are not designed to impeach. He doubtless con- 



206 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

and real. They would accept concessions, but 
they professed no confidence in them ; they would 
take them for what they might be worth ; they 
would accept Mr. Crittenden's proposal; they 
might accept that of the Peace Conference ; they 
would take either, provisionally only. 

What was the attitude of the North ? When 
Congress met in December, the Senate was in a 
large majority against the incoming administra- 
tion, and in the House of Representatives parties 
were balanced; but before the 4th of March, by the 

" sidered carefully and well what the South could be induced 
" to accept ; and he undoubtedly believed this to be embodied 
" and presented in his plan of compromise. A slave-holder 
"himself; born, educated, and living amid the institution; 
" he could not or did not realize that his conditions would 
" seem inadmissible to any but the narrowest and most mis- 
" erable fanatics. Assuming his premises, regarding the mat- 
" ter exclusively from the standpoint, and putting conscience 
"and consistency entirely out of the question, his proposal 
" was fair enough ; and its cordial adoption would doubtless 
" have exhilarated the stock market, and caused general 
" rejoicing on exchanges, and around the dinner-tables of 
" merchant princes. Its advocates with good reason claimed 
" a large majority of the people in its favor, and clamored 
"for its submission to a direct popular vote. Had such a 
" submission been accorded, it is very likely that the greater 
" number of those who voted at all would have voted to 
"ratify it." 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 207 

withdrawal of the Senators and Representatives of 
seceding States, the party of the new administra- 
tion became a great majority in the lower House, 
and in the Senate legislation was at their control. 
What, then, settlement with the South having been 
voted, by those who now controlled Congress, inex- 
pedient, were the measures directed against the 
approaching Southern movement? The people of 
the North had said, Anticipate it by a settlement; 
but where is the evidence that their leaders were 
not for separation, until the uprising of the people 
after the insult at Fort Sumter took away from 
them all option ? 

The cry had been of the North, the vain cry of 
the unnoticed people, for years, that the South 
would be driven to revolution ; it had come ; 
it had happened in one State, and was immi- 
nent in all. Before Congress adjourned, it had 
happened in seven, and was an appeal to arms. 
Did Congress take their measures as if it were 
right or were wrong? Did they confess, or did 
they deny? What did they do? They took on 
themselves, not to justify revolution, for its jus- 
tification must depend on results ; but, to submit 
to it. They did not proclaim disunion, but they 
opened the way for it. The proofs are on their 
journals. 



208 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

A bill had been introduced* into the House of 
Representatives for enforcing the Collection Laws 
by receiving customs-duties on ship-board, under 
naval and military protection, in those sea-ports 
where, by reason of acts of secession, they could 
not otherwise be collected; this bill was suffered 
to drop. Another bill,f of a more comprehensive 
kind than that intended for the control of the 
Southern trade, was introduced into the House 
from the Committee on Military Affairs, to author- 
ize the raising of a military force to uphold gener- 
ally the laws in the seceded States. It was also 
suffered to drop; and Mr. Douglas, in his place, on 
the 15th of March, during the session of the Sen- 
ate after the adjournment of Congress, intimated, 
in debate, uncontradicted, that this was by the 
special request of the incoming government. An- 
other movement was made, of the most unmistak- 
able significance ; the mail service in the seceded 
States was discontinued by act of Congress. Mr. 
Lincoln, in his address of the 4th of March, after 
signifying, in general terms, that, leaving it to 
its own way, he would not combat the secession 

* Congressional Globe. Second session, Thirty-sixth Con- 
gress, 1860-61 ; part 2, pp. 1422, 1433. 

f Congressional Globe. Second session, Thirty-sixth Con- 
gress, 1860-61 ; part 2, p. 1001. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 209 

movement/^' declared, specifically, of the mail ser- 
vice, that it would not be continued if, as 
he expressed it, "repelled." On the 28th of 
February ,f Congress passed the act authorizing 
the Postmaster-General to discontinue the mail 
service of the United States in the country of 
secession. 

So degraded had become the uses of democracy 
in the scramble for office, that the office-seekers 
were not ashamed to measure their conduct, when 
the life of the country was at stake, to what they 

* " When hostility to the United States shall be so great 
"and so universal as to prev^ent competent resident citizens 
"from holding the federal offices, there will be no attempt to 
"force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. 
" While the strict legal right may exist of the government to 
"enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so 
" would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable withal, 
" that I deem it better to forego for the time the use of such 
" offices." 

t Act signed by the President the 28th of February, 18GI, 
Congressional Globe, p. 328, Appendix. Second session, 
Thirty-sixth Congress, 1860-61. It passed the House, yeas 
131, nays 28, the 6th of February. In the Senate the yeas 
and nays on the passage of the bill have not been found ; but 
on the 20th of February there appears a motion to lay it on 
the table, which was defeated, — yeas 14, nays 23. The next 
day, the 21st of February, the vote to take up the bill was, 
yeas 23, nays 15. 



210 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

deemed the smallest hazard to their places;* and 
Congress adjourned the 4th of March, accepting 
the Southern alternative of a peaceful separation. 

* " For several weeks after the inauguration, no stated cab- 
" inet meetings were held." (Mr. Ex-Secretary of the Navy- 
Welles, in his paper "Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward," in the 
" Galaxy" for November, 1873, p. 688.) To understand bet- 
ter Mr. Welles, see a speecli of Mr. Nesmith in the Senate, 
delivered the 23d of March, on a motion to remove officers 
and appoint new ones (Congressional Globe, p. 1496): "I 
" know that the administration is very much embarrassed. 
" I know that there is a throng here of countless spoilsmen 
" who desire place. I meet them everywhere. I have had 
" within the last two days some business to transact at the 
" departments, and I have found every avenue to the office of 
"every secretary and every head of a bureau of this govern- 
" ment crowded with hungry office-seekers, — old men and 
"young men; long, gaunt, lean young men; old, limping, 
" bald-headed gentlemen, — choking up the avenues to the 
" various secretaries of this government, when I had busi- 
" ness relative to the interests of my constituents, and could 
" not get an opportunity to have an interview with them. 

" This state of facts exists, too, sir, at a time when the 
"administration and the government should have something 
" else to think about. It is said that Nero fiddled while 
"Rome was burning; and here are forty thousand office- 
" seekers fiddling around the administration for loaves and 

" fishes while the government is being destroyed. 

********* 
"If I were in the place of Mr. Lincoln, considering the 

"present exigencies of the country, considering that the 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 211 

In the session of the Senate, after the adjourn- 
ment of Congress, between the 4th and 28th of 
March, Mr. Douglas took up this subject, and, 

"Union is dissolving- and disintegrating beneath our feet, I 
" would turn the federal bayonets against the oflSee-seekers. 
"... I would settle those questions which are pressing on 
"the administration, and which its advocates on this floor 
" declare it has not had time to consider. I would deter- 
" mine, first, whether we have a government or not. I 
" would settle upon some sort of policy, that the American 
" people might know what was in the future, — what the 
"administration was determined to do; whether we are to 
" have peace or war ; whether this state of suspense is to 
"continue. I say, I would put these gentlemen off until that 
"was determined; and I think it becomes this body, as a 
"conservative body, not being identified with those general 
"questions of politics which have agitated the countr}^ to 
" take that view of the case. 

"I apprehend that those gentlemen who are urgent for 
"places here are gentlemen who are disappointed. I have 
"met them in throngs. [Laughter.] To show how promis- 
"cuous these sorts of crowds are, I will mention that the 
" other morning I went up to one of the departments, being 
"anxious to transact some business there which relates to a 
" matter involving over two millions of dollars to my con- 
"stituents; and I was found there by some gentleman from 
" Illinois who supposed I was an office-seeker; he mistook 
" me for some friend of his, I apprehend, who wanted a post- 
" office in the interior of Illinois ; and, as I was standing in 
"the crowd, waiting for an audience, he tapped me on the 



212 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

addressing himself to it, said he was decidedly 
against war; and that he so construed the In- 
augural Address. He reminded them that they 
had, with complete power in both Houses, allowed 
Congress to adjourn, and, apparently on consulta- 
tion with Mr. Lincoln, nothing done to prepare for 
forcible measures. They had acted, as he thought, 
well ; but the anxieties of the country ought to be 
relieved. To relieve, he said, those anxieties, he 
moved a resolution of inquiry,* which was laid on 
the table by a party vote of twenty-three to eleven; 
a studied and concerted silence being maintained 
by the friends of the administration, with the ex- 
ceptions of Mr, Trumbull and Mr. Wade, who ex- 
pressed, indistinctly, their views, and Mr. Hale,f 
who expressed himself distinctly in favour of sepa- 
ration. J 

" shoulder, and said, ' I have fixed that little matter ; you will 

" 'get that post-office.' [Laughter.] 

********* 

" I say, this system should not extend to the Senate, and 
" I protest against the consideration of the question at this 
"time." 

* Congressional Globe, 1860-61. Second session. Thirty- 
sixth Congress, part 2, p. 1511. 

f Congressional Globe, 1860-61. Second session, Thirty- 
sixth Congress, part 2, p. 1470. 

I " I do not know," said Mr. Seward, in his speech to the 
Senate, already cited, of the 12tii of January, 1861, "what 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 213 

Governments do not say, we will part with a 
third of our territory and population ; they let it 
happen. When the mistakes of politicians have 
made an alternative of miseries, they do not say 
to a deceived and ruined people which misery they 
adopt. They drift with the flood. Such, in their 
miseries, was the way Avith the government and 
their friends in Congress ; they would neither op- 
pose secession nor consent to it. They came into 
power promising sunshine, and, when the storm 
arose, they had neither the hearts and confidence 
of the people, nor the courage necessary to meet 
the emergency. To part with the South, was a 
responsibility they could not take on themselves ; 
but it was the end they looked to, for it was the 
solution of the problem. 

With proceedings in Congress exactly tallied 
those of the Executive. Witness the negotiations 
of the State Department with the commissioners 
and authorities of the seceded States, and the 
conduct of the War and Navy Departments, in 
suffering officers to go home to serve their States, 
resigning their commissions and discharging them- 
selves of all duty to the government. 

The case of General Johnston, the Quartermaster- 

"the Union would be worth, if saved by the use of the 
"sword." 



214 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

General of the army, is described in his work lately 
published* His parting with his commission illus- 
trates all the cases ; and they were very numerous 
in both branches of the service. " Having been 
" educated in such opinions, T naturally deter- 
" mined to return to the State of which I was a 
'' native, join the people among whom I was born, 
" and live with my kindred, and, if necessary, 
'' fight in their defence. Accordingly, the resign a- 
" tion of my commission, written on Saturday, was 
" offered to the Secretary of War Monday morning. 
" That gentleman was requested, at the same time, 
"to instruct the Adjutant-General, who had kindly 
" accompanied me, to write the order announcing 
" its acceptance, immediately. . . . Many officers 
'-' of that army, of Southern birth, had previously 
" resigned their commissions, to return to the States 
" of which they were citizens, and many others did 
" so later. Their objects in quitting the United 
" States army, and their intentions to enter the 
" service of the seceded States, were well known 
"in the War Department. Yet no evidence of 
" disapproval of these intentions was given by 
" the federal administration, nor efforts made by 
"it to prevent their execution." 

* "Narrative of Military Operations during the Late War 
"between the States," pp. 10, 11. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 215 

This expectation of the chiefs of the new party 
of a final separation, leaving South and North each 
to enjoy its own power, continued long after the 
war had begun. It continued nntil the tide of 
success changed from South to North. It was 
briefly, but clearly, expressed by Mr. Cameron in 
1863, when the war was far into its second year. 
Mr. Boyer, a member of the House of Representa- 
tives of Pennsylvania, testified before a committee 
of that body thus: ''General Cameron then said, 
" This ends it. I will be Senator, and there is no 
"doubt the Southern States will gain their inde- 
" pendence, and I will have more power than any 
" other man in the State." ''^ 

SECTION XVII. 

THE CIVIL WAR. 

The seekers of patronage had done their work ; 
and the country was to be divided, or worse ; for, 
had a division been effected between the North 
and the South, endless divisions and endless wars 
would have ensued, making necessary new com- 
binations; and those wars would have lasted, and 

* Testimony of Thomas Jefferson Boyer, p. 11. Report of 
Select Oomaiittee of the House of Representatives of Penn- 
sylvania under a Resolution of the 20th of January, 1863. 



216 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

those combinations not have been completed, till 
democracy was trampled to the ground, and, per- 
haps, liberty was extinct. Once at war, a people 
are in the hands of their government, though it be 
of the meanest materials. The people of the North 
gave soldiers, and money more than could be used ; 
but the direction given to the war was the govern- 
ment's direction, not the people's. In the South it 
was no better. When the tide turned against them, 
they wanted the Union again; but their govern- 
ment prevented it, having, like the Northern gov- 
ernment, motives of their own, distinct from the 
people's.* 

* In the Union, the Northern States, by immense majori- 
ties, would have voted for justice, though the South stood to 
their arras to demand it, so deep and perfect was the convic- 
tion of the injustice of that terrible agitation with which they 
incessantly were goaded, and which not even slaves could 
bear forever. What they called their independence was 
common ruin. North and South, and the demand for it was 
backed, at Fort Sumter, with as gross and deliberate an insult 
as ever was offered. Had the South afterwards, instead of 
pressing the war to the exhaustion of the means of carrying 
it on, and then opening negotiations with men who would 
have been, politically, wrecked by a peaceful adjustment, 
publicly offered to the people of the North to return to the 
Union, it would have told instantly at every election poll, 
and swept the country of all vestige of opposition to an equal 
and honourable peace. It would have given us the Union, 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 217 

The leaders had looked to separation ; but not 
so the people; they had to be reconciled to it. The 
people of the North, astonished at the course of 
events, stood still ; the people of the South paused 
before such a step as revolution, being full of the 
uneasiness natural to a society on the eve of great 
events, but especially a society like that of the 
South, wholly incomplete in its organization, for 
they were almost exclusively an agricultural people. 
They had to be reconciled to separation by war. 

The quarrels of nations turn often, like those of 
individuals, on affronts. Our ancestors submitted 
when the mother-country interdicted their infant 
manufactures,* and their commerce; but they de- 

and not the troubled country we live in. But the people, for 
thirty years, had been nothing; it was that brought the war 
on ; and during the war, though it could not have gone 
through a campaign had they taken their shoulders from the 
wheel, they were not more considered than they are in any 
country where arms silence the law. 

* Lord Chatham, rated by the Colonies their best friend, 
and certainly he said some magnificent things in their behalf, 
declared in one of his speeches that he would not let the 
Americans manufacture as much as a hob-nail. They were 
prohibited every species of manufacturing industr}^ carried 
on in England ; their trade was under the strictest monopoly ; 
confined to English ports; even the interchange of produc- 
tions, among their own harbours, along the Atlantic coast, 
limited and restricted, if not wholly forbidden ; and tliese 

15 



218 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

clared independence and rose in rebellion when 
she imposed a small tax on their internal trade. 
Great Britain, vitally interested in our dissen- 
sions, which, had they ended in separating the 
States, would have left her marine without a rival, 
called herself neutral, but she drew the sword and 
demanded prompt satisfaction when Mr. Mason 
and Mr. Slidell were taken from the deck of one 
of her ships. Negro slavery, the vile pretence of 
which the South had been so long the victim — and 
no giddy-headed prince ever invaded his neigh- 
bour's dominions on falser pretences * than those 
on which we gave the South no rest — found, and 

grievances of vassalage were regarded not intolerable until 
the disputes about the right of Parliament to impose an in- 
ternal tax for purposes of revenue, v^hich was taxation with- 
out representation, brought everything into debate, and our 
ancestors roused to the consideration of men's natural rights ; 
which mankind had before that time not much considered, 
but which, ever since, has been, and now is, at the root of 
all reasoning upon the democi'atic problem. 

* When the end was attained, immediately Congress 
adopted the famous resolution that " the present deplorable 
"civil war" was waged in no "spirit of oppression, nor pur- 
" pose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or estab- 
" lished institutions" of the Southern States, in the House by 
a vote of 119 to 2, and in the Senate 80 to 5 (Congressional 
Globe, House, 22d of July; Senate, 25th of July, 1862); and 
it was a correct expression of the feeling of the country. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 219 

left, after all the agitation of it, in the people of 
the non-slave-holding States, a feeling as true to 
the slave-holders as to themselves; but, instantly, 
the cry was war when the affront came at Fort 
Sumter. 

SECTION XVIIl. 

AFTER THE WAR. 

In a civil war begun by the South, the people 
of the North reaped the reward of a long neglect 
of all their duties ; and here ended the first act 
of a long persecution, in malignity not exceeded by 
any religious persecution, when we consider the 
deep feeling of wickedness and hate which in- 
spired the originators of it, the old abolitionists. 
In the nearly thirty years during which the South 
were unrelentingly pursued, they made many mis- 
takes, but their crowning mistake was in forcing 
the war. It settled the old account and opened 
a new one. 

The South were driven to despair by agitation, 
but not driven to war. All that can justify war is 
necessity, or success ; and the Southern necessity 
was the necessity to exasperate their people and 
prevent accommodation. Success was out of the 
question, because the immense odds in favour of 
the North, and geographical considerations, rivers 



220 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

and boundaries which could not be removed, to 
say nothing of men's honour, and the future of 
their country, were insurmountable bars to perma- 
nent peace on terms of disunion. A man may 
play with his own fortunes as desperate a game 
as he pleases ; but statesmen, to whom are com- 
mitted, or who have assumed to themselves, the 
care of the lives and fortunes of others, are bound 
to moderation, to prudence, and respect to circum- 
stances. The Southern leaders threw away all 
chances but those of battle. The same want of 
moderation, stimulated by personal, selfish ambi- 
tion, which, when nearly all the North sympa- 
thized with them, put the South on a career that 
was headlong, and limited and contracted Northern 
opposition to Mr. Lincoln's government to ques- 
tions and considerations that were soon swept 
away in the torrent of war, characterized, to the 
last moment, the Southern leaders, and turned 
their faces against fair, liberal, and just accommo- 
dation, which the people of the North longed for, 
and, when it was too late, the people of the South. 
They forfeited those claims to statesmanship, justly 
earned long before, in better days, and till now 
possessed ; and their right, the great right of revo- 
lution, they degraded to the untenable and paltry 
pretence of the right of secession. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 221 

But where have civil war and revolution left 
us? In England, their revolution of 1688, begun 
by the infatuation of a king, carried through by a 
foreign prince, with his army, the people taking 
no part, and the privileged classes none that was 
positive, till it ceased to be perilous, was as suc- 
cessful, the point of departure considered, as ours 
was in 1776, which had the people to back it; and 
it has left them institutions which have lasted two 
hundred years. In the United States, where there 
was no king to play the fool, only the people, their 
revolution of 1860 has left democracy clouded 
with doubts, and federal institutions, the only 
ones on which it can rest, staggering with con- 
solidation. 



222 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 



CHAPTER VIII. 

FEDERALISM. 
SECTION I. 

OTJR SAFETY IS THERE. 

The President of the United States, whose 
federal patronage Franklin feared would make 
him a king, became the head of an alliance con- 
trolling all patronage, federal, State, and mu- 
nicipal. The great federal places, originally, were 
few; and the small, which were not many, w^ere 
confined to the humble services of posts and cus- 
toms. Such was the Constitution ; let any man 
look at it to-day. Even before the recent enor- 
mous increase of patronage by the war, federal 
had swallowed up State power and become the 
centre of democratic corruption ; the worst of all 
corruption, and the most ruinous. 

How shall it be diminished ? By the people 
doing their duty ; and their first duty is to take 
into their hands the affairs of their States, their 
cities, their counties, their boroughs, their towns, 
their townships; all that Mr. Jefferson called 
their ward republics ; thus, not amending the Con- 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 223 

stitution, hut our conduct under it, bv depriving 
the centre of that usurped power over the Stiites 
by which we are hurried, no man knows whither. 
Let us not Lay these usurpations, and the cor- 
ruptions which accompany them, to the door of 
the war, and the party now in power; they are a 
growth which had been sedulously cultivated for 
thirty years before the war began. 

In 1774, what was called the Quebec Bill wns 
objected to in the House of Commons because it 
provided for the appointment in London of the 
local legislatures of the Canadas. But the min- 
ister called to the bar of the House his witnesses, 
who testified that the people of Canada liked 
centralization, and did not want to elect their 
own legislatures. Those Canadians are yet a 
British dependency. Two years later, in 1776, 
the thirteen Colonies rose against the govern- 
ment in London because it took on itself the office 
of their local legislatures ; they waged a war of 
rebellion, and, ceasing to be a British dependency, 
established themselves as a federal republic. 

In that form of government, safety comes with 
the division of power, and this is indispensable 
when the power is democratic. That would be a 
perfect federal system where the citizen served the 
public as usefully, and sat as proudly, as a member 



224 pet^lRS for democracy regarded from 

of the Legislature of his State or province, as in 
the halls of the central government ; but this can 
never be ; moreover, it is in the nature of human 
forces to be always gaining or losing; perfection 
alone stands still, and with us State power has lost 
ground and the central has gained. The State is 
the lesser influence, and attracts not the aspiring; 
but becomes to the politician who guides the des- 
tiny of the centre an inferior consideration. Mr. 
Jefferson was the champion of State rights ; but 
when at the head of the Executive of the United 
States and no longer a member of the Legislature 
of his State, or its Governor or immediate repre- 
sentative, can we suppose he was capable of hold- 
ing the balance true between State power and that 
of the Union whose chief he was? Who would be? 



SECTION II. 

FEDERALISM IN ITS STRICTNESS WAS INSISTED ON IN 1787. 

The tendency is to centralization. The States, 
having an instinctive fear of it, when they met in 
convention put themselves on a basis of adjust- 
ments, which were the compromise on which they 
rested the federal Union. To this compromise the 
people agreed, to it they might have disagreed ; 
and one of the representatives of the small State of 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 225 

Delaware, debating it, said that his State, if denied 
fair terms of union, by which he meant a vote 
equal to that of Virginia, then the most populous 
State, would withdraw and seek foreign alliance. 
None gainsaid the position, none questioned the 
right, none doubted that the State of Delaware was 
free to come into the Union, or to stand alone, or 
ally itself, if it would, with a kingdom of the con- 
tinent of Europe, subject only to the understanding 
and law of all nations, that one country in the exer- 
cise of its rights must not derogate from the safety 
of others. The remedy for such derogation would 
have been war, the old and the universal remedy 
of nations. The violation of it by the State of 
Delaware would have been warrant for the other 
States taking up arms to reduce her to reason ; as 
three of the States of Europe, Holland, Germany, 
and England, took up arms to prevent a French 
prince, though next in blood and the right heir, 
from ascending the throne of Spain and prejudicing 
common safety by giving undue preponderance to 
the house of Bourbon. There was no other bar 
to the threatened course of the little State of Dela- 
ware in 1787. The State of Rhode Island, which 
came into the Union under moral compulsion, 
might have persisted in the refusal to come in, but 
it would have ended in the physical compulsion 



226 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

of war. So it would have been with North Caro- 
lina, which stood off upon the same principle. 

The men who sat in the convention had not been 
taught, by use and experience, the perils of consol- 
idation; the depths and shallows of the democratic 
flood on which they launched our barque were to 
them unknown ; and the value of the States, as 
States, was a contested point, not yet understood. 
The idea of restricting their rights, and even of 
blotting them out, consisted with theories of that 
day. The convention thought the States too 
strong and the centre too weak ; which was so 
under the Confederacy ; but time and events have 
reversed it; and now, of all our problems, what 
ought to be the simplest and easiest is that which 
lies in the question between the federal principle 
and centralization. 



SECTlOISr III. 

FEDERALISM AN OBSTACLE TO THE EXCESSES OF DEMOCRACY. 

Without the States, democracy would be des- 
potism. The law-giver's art is displayed in break- 
ing the force of power; we break it, when we 
divide judicial power among two or more tribunals; 
we break it, when we divide legislative power be- 
tween a Senate and a House of Representatives; 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 227 

but democracy is, of all others, the power of which 
the law-giver has to break the force, for what 
would be a constitution, or any writing, if de- 
mocracy might read it as it pleases ? Against 
democracy the States are the barrier; they are 
the only barrier. The sweep of the democratic 
wave is broken at State lines. Could those gen- 
tlemen of the convention, in their attempt have 
succeeded, who desired to see the States done 
away, they would have left us to the mercy of 
that ocean, the tempestuous ocean of democracy, 
which they so much feared. The States are, as a 
power, infinitely superior to what are called insti- 
tutions, in the ordinary sense of that term, and 
which are artificial only. 

Aristocracy is an institution, and is a power or 
barrier, but it is not like a State, indestructible, 
whose existence fire and sword only can destroy. 
Aristocracy is sanctioned by time, or exists by 
patent ; and stands between the crown and the 
people, to aid the weaker and resist the stronger ; 
in Russia it resists the crown, in England it resists 
the people ; but no aristocracy can oppose such 
resistance to power as the States of this Union, 
which are integral parts of the country itself, and 
whose patent is population and territory. Aris- 
tocracy, an institution the use of which is to give 



228 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

steadiness, the steadiness of birth, wealth, and 
hereditation, makes one citizen, without regard to 
merit or desert, another citizen's superior, which is 
odious; the federal system of the United States, 
leaving men equal or unequal according to their 
faculties, natural and acquired, and alike members 
of both organizations, that of the State and that 
of the Union, violates no instinct, offends no preju- 
(Jice, and yet formidably and strongly resists that 
democratic power whose unchecked force would be 
the weakness of our government. 

SECTION IV. 

FEDERALISM IS STRENGTH. 

In the antagonism of two forces we find our 
strength ; our institutions are strong when central 
power is strong enough to unite the States and 
not more. Such an union is liberty, and it is lib- 
erty we seek. He who looks to centralization, to 
greatness, to our being a great and mighty empire, 
looks backward, he looks to barbarism; he looks 
forward who looks to the federal system giving us 
a safe and happy liberty ; greatness will come only 
too fast. It is not the destruction of property, it 
is not the disturbance of society by the late war 
which causes, since its close, the changed condition 
of the Southern States ; it is the consolidation of 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 229 

their governments at Washington. Had their 
State power been left to them, and they had been 
permitted to regulate their home affairs, the wast- 
ing effects of war would soon have disapjDeared 
During the war it was the States and their sub- 
divisions, what Mr. Jefferson called ''ward repub- 
lics," which supported and carried it on. Far 
from being a hindrance to the central government, 
without the States the centre would liave been 
chaos. Military operations may need a single 
hand, but no central power could have controlled 
the country to such untiring military efforts as 
were made, North and South, through the influ- 
ence of the States. 

It was a point not disputed in the British de- 
bates on the reforms of 1831-2, debates which 
might stand in honourable memory of that country 
were its other records blotted out, that institutions 
are not to be made. The most safe, solid, and 
permanent parts of ours are not what they made 
in 1787, but found made; protecting the old Con- 
federacy, and which they left to protect the new. 
Fortunate are the law-givers who find made to 
their hand power capable of giving protection to 
their work. That, of the gentlemen who sat in the 
convention, those the most fearful of democracy 
should have been the most decided foes of State 



230 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

power, might be called short-sightedness, did we 
not know that power, to be judged correctly, must 
be seen in action. They could not know in 1787 
how the turbidness of democracy would be stirred 
by central power; and that the States were to be 
our conservative feature. 

SECTION Y. 

EXTENT OF TERRITORY. 

Whoever will glance at the map of our territory 
may ask himself the question, and answer it if he 
can, how we are to live in freedom after the State 
governments have been, not taken away, for that 
would be to let the whole structure fall to ruin, 
but after they have been, by processes of centrali- 
zation, abridged of their powers. A country of 
such extent as the United States can be free only 
in the federal form ; and it must not be a mockery ; 
federal government or military is the alternative. 
The sympathy, sometimes wondered at, which has 
always existed between the United States and 
Russia, is one of the proofs of this. It is because 
they are extremes that they meet. If Russia were 
not, as she is, a despotism, there could only be a • 
Russia as a federation of States ; if the United 
States were not, as they are, a federation of States, 
they could be only a Russia and a despotism. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 231 



SECTION VI. 

SECKSSION. 



In regarding the question of State rights, let us 
have no fear of secession. In 1860 secession was 
but a name, it was a revolution. No publicists, 
no tribunal however composed, of public men or 
theorists, could ever have found the doctrine of 
secession in the Constitution of the United States 

When the last clause of the sixth resolution of 
the Virguiia draft of a Constitution " authorizing 
" an e.xertion of the force of the whole against a 
''delinquent State" came under consideration of 
the federal convention,* Mr. Madison made an ob- 
servation on it, which has been sometimes used to 
support the doctrine of secession; he said, "that 
" the more he reflected on the use of force, the 
"more he doubted the practicability, the justice, 
" and the efficacy of it, when applied to people 
'• collectively, and not individually. An union of 
'• the States containing such an ingredient seemed 
" ti) provide for its own destruction. The use of 
" force against a State would look more like a de- 
"claration of war than an infliction of punishment; 
" and would probably be considered by the party 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 761. 



232 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts 
"by which it might be bound. He hoped that 
" such a system would be framed as might render 
" this resource unnecessary." ^ut the system now 
existing, unknown to the Confederacy, by which 
the powers of the central government operate 
upon, not States, but individuals, had not then 
been matured ; and in the debates on the adoption 
of the Constitution in the convention of the State 
of New York, Mr. Hamilton, a different order of 
mind and character from Mr. Madison, but, like 
him, a great and good citizen, and without whose 
unflagging zeal the Constitution could not have 
been vindicated from the objections made to it 
in New York, and that State would have joined 
North Carolina and Rhode Island and refused to 
ratify, in the same spirit with Mr. Madison, said,* 
'-'• It has been observed, to coerce the States is one 
"of the maddest projects that was ever devised. 
" A failure of compliance will never be confined 
"to a single State. . . . Here is a nation at war 
" with itself. Can any reasonable man be well 
" disposed towards a government which makes war 
" and carnage the only means of supporting itself, 
" — a government that can exist only by the sword? 
" Every such war must involve the innocent with 

* Elliott's Debates, vol. ii. pp. 232, 233 ; June 20, 1788. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 233 

" the guilty. This single consideration should be 
"sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against 
" such a government." 

Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Madison did not mean 
that the Union was to 'exist at the pleasure of the 
parties ; that States, delinquent in their federal 
duties, or disgusted with the . delinquencies of 
others, might withdraw from a Union which had 
ceased to please them. They meant that to pro- 
vide for war among the States, as a Constitutional 
means of union, was absurd. They provided for 
union ; they did not provide for a dissolution of it. 
In administering the government, the use of force 
against States would look like, not a measure of 
justice, but of war and punishment; irreconcile- 
able with the idea of union. 

Had the framers of the Constitution put in it a 
provision that, in the event of a difierence between 
the federal government and one or more of the 
States, the use of force against a State should be 
resorted to, pursuant to the decree of some high 
court of justice, constituted for this purpose, or 
pursuant to the unanimous vote of both Houses 
of Congress, or pursuant to a vote at the polls of 
the people of five-sixths of the States, the incon- 
gruity pointed out by Mr. Madison would have been 
not less obvious than it was in the clause of the 

16 



234 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

draft to which he so successfully took exception ; 
for he moved, after the remarks which have been 
quoted, "that the clause be postponed;" the report 
adds, "this motion was agreed to owm. con.;'" and, 
being rendered unnecessary by the system adopted 
of laws bearing upon citizens, not States, the clause 
was never again brought forward. 

The dissatisfied State or States might adhere to 
their own conclusions, though the votes of Congress 
or the people against them were unanimous, or 
decrees of the courts never so clear. They might 
refuse to submit. The citizens of the South, when 
they put their authority to break up the Union on 
their attributes as States, were right if they meant 
revolution; if they meant their rights as members 
of the Union, they were not less wrong, neither 
were they more wrong, than they would have 
been had the Constitution of 1787 provided, in 
express language, against the right of secession ; or 
had there been a decision against the exercise of 
the right by a Constitutional tribunal of undisputed 
supremacy. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 



SECTION VII. 

THE DOUBLK ALLKGIANCE. 

When Mr. Jefferson said no country ought to 
be as long as a century and a half without a revo- 
lution,* he said too much; but let us not forget 
that in less than one century we have had two 
revolutions. None of our people will longer tol- 
erate injury and affront than the Southern States 
did. The South were not patient, but they bore 
long with their afflictions. From 1835, when 
they began, to 1860, was twenty-five years; from 
1808, when the Embargo, interfering with New 
England commerce, an infinitely small grievance 
compared with that of the slavery agitation, went 
into operation, to 1814, when the war, declared 
against England, in pursuance of the Embargo 
policy, brought three of the New England States to 
preparations for immediate secession, was but six 
years. The soundest principles are exactly those 
in which discontents make their nest; and the 
rights of the States have come into disrepute by 
having been so often their refuge. Mr. Jefferson's 
Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, even Mr. Madi- 

* JeflFerson's Works, vol. ii. pp. 331, 332. 



236 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

son's Virginia Resolutions of 1797, were nothing 
but discontents. Neither Mr. Jefferson nor Mr. 
Madison, when they came to the head of the 
government, could have administered it on such 
principles. 

But it is not State rights, it is the opposite tend- 
ency which ought to be the object of fear. While 
disunion is the greatest misfortune these States 
could undergo, for nationalities are the work of 
time, and no hand can form them, it is not their 
greatest danger. It is consolidation, an enemy full 
of cunning, and always at the door. 

When the Constitution of the United States 
was accepted by the States, what they feared, and 
what they paused upon, was centralization. It 
was their centralizing tendencies that destroyed 
the old federal party, the desire of what they 
called a high-toned government. When the dem- 
ocratic party fell in 1860, it was centralization, 
persisted in for years, which brought it to the 
ground. The party which succeeded to it main- 
tains its power by centralizing practices which carry 
it every day nearer and nearer to the universal dis- 
gust of the whole public mind. Men are blinded 
by success. The party founded by Mr. Jefferson 
lost its way by long enjoyment of power, that is, 
by success; and the party which took its place, 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 237 

blinded with success in a war aorainst seceding: 
States, has set up the victorious centre in opposi- 
tion to the plainest rights of the States. 

The loser in war need not ask for justice; had 
the Revolution of '76 failed, Washington would 
have been executed on Tower Hill. But though 
with the event of the war the secession dogma 
went down, and the consolidation dogma went 
up, the elements of things are unchanged and un- 
changeable; and like causes will, to the end, go on 
producing like effects. If we remain a free people, 
the same spirit that prompted the South to what 
they called secession will prompt the North, or 
the West, or the Middle, or any region where 
insult aggrieves or oppression tramples, to seek 
redress, and another conflict like that of 1860 will 
ensue, ninety-nine citizens in a hundred, as then, 
going with their States. 

Mr. Clay once said in the Senate that his first 
allegiance was to the federal government, and after 
that to Kentucky ; and he was right. The ques- 
tion was, whose was the supreme law under the 
Constitution. He was controverting nullification ; 
in other words, the right of secession. But had 
Mr. Clay said that if his State were driven by in- 
justice to revolution he would take up arms against 
her, he would have said more than any other man, 



238 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

Washington perliajps excepted, could have been 
relied on to do. 

Moreover, what is called the right of revolution 
is the power of revolution. It was not optional 
with those citizens who were in the minority in the 
Southern States, in 1861, to resist or submit when 
their States, by organized action and great majori- 
ties, set themselves up against the Union. It was 
necessity. This city of Philadelphia may be sup- 
posed to be as patriotic and disinterested as any 
like number of persons; but who believes that had 
the -State of Pennsylvania seceded, the citizens of 
Philadelphia would have stood a siege for the 
Union, or, leaving all they had behind them, 
abandoned their firesides and taken shelter with 
an idea? Would the wealth and wisdom of the 
city have given that advice? would they have set 
the example ? Would such conduct accord with 
either the nature of man, or that principle, the 
consent of the governed, on which our govern- 
ments rest? ^Yhen the city took up arms in 1861, 
it was a necessity, for the State was part of the 
Union. Had the State not been part of the Union, 
the necessity would have been to fight on the other 
side. 

Ours is a double allegiance. The State is our 
country, the Union is our government, and though 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 239 

we mny have more than one allegiance we can 
have but one country ; we love our country, we 
respect our government ; one is a passion, the 
other is a duty. Laws and covenants unite the 
State to the Union, but nature herself binds the 
citizen to his State. Destructive to illusions, and 
disgraceful to democracy, as the civil war and 
events preceding and following it have been, their 
dangers not passed, their mischiefs perhaps per- 
manent, a division of the country would have 
been worse ; and worse for the South than for the 
North. But should centralization come to plague 
us, and the citizen be again driven to measures 
of despair, it would again be seen that the Union 
is a creature of policy, to adhere to which scarce 
a man would separate himself from his State. ''' 
Who ever heard of the country of the world in 
which the people declared against their own 
homes? This may be human weakness; but it 
is a great inevitable fact. 

* The general-in-chief of the army, in 1860, stood by the 
Union, and made war on his State; and so did other ofiBcers, 
both of the land and sea service; for the sailor's and soldier's 
household gods commonly are found with his regiment or in 
his ship. 



240 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 



CHAPTER IX. 

DEMOCRACY HAS TO MAKE ITS WAY AGAINST ESTAB- 
LISHED IDEAS AND THE FORCE OF AUTHORITY. 

SECTION I. 

POLITICAL WRITERS. 

Two celebrated writers, both of them kiiigsmen, 
thus, in the Last century, approach the confines of 
democratic liberty : '^ If any ask me," says Mr. 
Burke,* "what a free government is, I answer, for 
" any practical purpose, it is what the people think 
" so ; and they, not I, are the natural, lawful, and 
"competent judges of this matter." Mr. Hume,f 
with greater reluctance, and more wrappers to his 
meaning, had said, not long before, " It is in vain 
" to say that all governments are or should be, at 
" first, founded on popular consent, as much as the 
"necessity of human affairs will admit. ... I 
" maintain that human affairs will never admit of 
" this consent ; seldom of the appearance of it. 

* Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 
f Essay on the Original Contract. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 241 

" But, that conquest or usurpation, that is, in plain 
"terms, force, by dissolving the ancient govern- 
" ment, is the origin of almost all the new ones 
"which were ever substituted in the world. . . . 
" My intention here is not to exclude the consent 
"of the people from being one just foundation of 
" government where it has place. It is surely the 
"best and most sacred of any. I only pretend 
" that it has very seldom had place in any degree, 
"and never almost in its full extent: and that 
"therefore some other foundation of government 
" must also be admitted. . . . The general obliga- 
" tion which binds us to government is the inter- 
" ests and necessities of society." 

Advance their principles a step farther, let the 
free citizen, whose government has "the consent 
" of the people," a consent " surely the best and 
" most sacred of any," stand sentinel over it, and 
that liberty to which these writers allow a theory 
acquires a reality. 



SECTION II. 

TRADITION. 



According to immemorial use, as well as theory, 
power belongs to privileged classes, with, incum- 
bent on them, the corresponding duty of caring 
for the people. Such is tradition; and when in the 



242 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

Old World they marvel at the license of the New, 
it is under the influence of a habit of thought 
which traces itself to times when liberal principles 
were unknown, and popular government impos- 
sible. Their ancestors think for them in Europe. 
Time leaves monuments behind it that are too 
much for the wit of man. These are the effects 
of a thousand years of history. There is no old 
country where the government is supposed to exist 
for the people; on the contrary, the people are 
supposed to exist for the government. Even in 
England, where they have a degree of respectabil- 
ity, and in France, where their title to it has been 
vindicated by successive revolutions, the people are 
thought to be usurpers ; they are so regarded by 
the upper orders, they so look upon themselves. 

Montesquieu, who wrote with the noble instincts 
of liberty, and every bias to free institutions, but 
in Europe, where everything stands still, measured 
by the American standard, supported his freedom, 
a century and a half ago, with institutions which 
can find no place in the world as v^e see it. His 
thoughts were of greatness and dominion ; he had 
no thought of a republic like that of the United 
States, with life in every fibre, yet of tame, do- 
mestic habits; He had a society before his eyes, 
in his own country, where the peasants, once vil- 



THE AMERICAN TOINT OF VIEW. 243 

leins, and still loaded with unextinguished feudal 
liabilities, shared their vintage with the priest, 
ground their grain at the lord's mill, and, with 
their beasts of burden, were driven to work in 
the trenches, by the king's troops. Ignorant, and 
divided' by provinces and dialects, they had no 
common object ; hardly a common language ; and 
the ends and uses of social combination were not 
understood. As communities they lived separate 
from one another, and as individuals had but few 
common and united interests. 

It is to this traditionary form of society the 
most liberal Europeans* refer themselves in con- 

* Not excepting Mr. De Tocqueville, who leaves his Amer- 
ican reader, having- before him the familiar facts, often more 
wondering at the author's ingenuity than satisfied with his 
deductions. Not that we would deny him what he has 
received, the highest praise, and from both the friends of 
liberty and those who would discourage it. Mr. De Tocque- 
ville saw a country; democratic, that is true, but with other 
features too ; unfinished, provincial, where the past does not 
predominate, as in Europe, but made up of what Shakspeare 
calls the "ignorant present;" and for what he sees and puts 
down all to democracy, and then proceeds to reason from, 
there are often causes so simple, and so different from those 
imputed by him, that, mixed with much respect for a candid, 
philosophic writer, not a little admiration of his earnest desire 
to find the truth, and thanks for his French politeness to a 
people not much accustomed to it, and the most unqualified 



244 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

sidering that of the United States; and the 
shadows of their opinions darken both their path 
and ours. But in this New World, though we 
denounce democracy often, and liberty sometimes, 
it is as the spoiled children of good fortune. It is 
not easy for us to believe Sir Robert Filmer was 
followed by disciples, and had to be met in argu- 
ment by Locke. Without an ancestry, and the first 
people that ever had a fair start, to the American 
it is as if there never had been tyranny, and the 

applause of that part of his book in which he traces demo- 
cratic force and virtue to decentralization, we are reminded 
often in his pages of a traveller who, astonished at new 
objects, persists in finding the reason for them all. Ameri- 
can women are chaste, American men are brave, — we are 
much obliged to him, — but it is because they are democratic ! ! 
And what does he mean by our tyranny of majorities ? — a 
phrase in fact without meaning, though often in the mouth 
of less able and good men than Mr. De Tocqueville ; unless, 
indeed, he means that where there is power we commonly 
find it exercised. In what part of the country did he see 
that peculiar American tyranny of mind, "Vous penserez 
"comme moi ou vous mourrez"? (Yol. ii. p. 114, fifth 
Paris edition, 1836.) Could a man who had written of the 
days of Louis the Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth as 
severely as Mr. De Tocqueville, talk so? How did he dis- 
cover the democratic inability to impose and pay taxes, put 
armies in the field, provide for the morrow, produce literary 
merit, foster the arts ? We might multiply questions. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 245 

world began in light. Above all, and worth all 
the rest, he has the pride of country, the senti- 
ment of nationality; every American citizen has 
his share in the honour and shame of his country ; 
a consciousness unknown to the masses in Europe. 

SECTION III. 

INDUSTRY. 

Virtue has been said to be indispensable to a 
republic, and its element to be the love of the 
republic. The author who has given to this obser- 
vation such universal currency, his eye fixed on 
the mistress of the ancient world, and ignorant of 
more homely doctrine, which has been developed 
since his time, meant virtue and love of the re- 
public as they prevailed at Rome, where the citizen 
was absorbed in the State, which was everything, 
while he was nothing; where there were no masses 
that had respectability; in effect, no people, no 
individuality ; instead of which were classes, an 
institution fatal to true freedom ; where the city 
had its palaces, and the man of the people his hut, 
and was without home or even privacy ; where 
poverty was honourable, there being little for 
money to buy ; and any labour but that of agricul- 
ture was ignoble, and performed by slaves. They 
did not respect industry; had no finance; lived on 



246 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

the spoils of nations. The citizen found pursuing 
a trade was degraded, and struck from the lists of 
his tribe; his testament, if he had anything to be- 
queath, was annulled or confirmed at the pleasure 
of the city ; so little did they regard the rights of 
property. 

But the world has changed; poverty has ceased 
to be honour to the man, and no State can be poor 
and great. With labour, that has become respect- 
able, has come a new era; thrift is honour, the 
industry which acquires is driving to the wall 
hereditary possession, whose measure is of past 
ages. The earth used to be the only producer, 
but now the fertility of man, his ingenuities and 
contrivances, with vast increase from the stimu- 
lated earth, multiply production, and, with it, 
individual wealth, happiness, liberty, independence,, 
and enjoyment. At Rome there was war to make 
the citizen love the republic ; was his love better 
than that of the American citizen who loves the 
republic that secures his industry? Property, 
which influences, and ought to influence to a de- 
gree, under whatever system, is well; it loves law 
and order; but industry is the rising wave; it 
gains, gathers, and accumulates; it is growth and 
activity, and loves the republic itself. 

Could years be rolled back, that we might look 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 247 

on those times when liberty had no existence, it 
would be seen that men were everywhere without 
industries. Industry is the handmaid of liberty; 
for, though there may be liberty without industry, 
there can be little industry, of any elevated sort, 
without liberty. Population consisted of two 
classes, those to whom the land belonged, and 
those who worked it, of whom none had what 
is known to us as an industry, but were persons 
bound to the glebe, and labourers as our negroes 
were. These two classes represented what mod- 
ern policy calls capital and labour; capital was 
a master, labour was a slave. But industry has 
brought us a better day. The Dutch, so distin- 
guished in arts, arms, and literature, and by their 
republican liberty, though it was short-lived by 
reason of want of population enough to resist their 
more populous neighbours, were an early example 
of the prodigies of a national industry. It is idle- 
ness that keeps back Spain, a noble country. It 
is the wealth and industry of France, grown up 
since the Revolution, which maintains, in a demo- 
cratic society, the liberty of the French citizen. 
It was the more independent condition, than in the 
Continental countries, of the labour of England, 
undisturbed by invading armies, that laid there 
the foundations of freedom. 



248 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

When Napoleon called England a nation of 
shop-keepers, he pointed to what made them what 
they are. It was industry which carried them 
through the wars with him, against a multitude 
of defeats in the field ; it was Northern industry 
which carried us through the war with the South, 
against a multitude of defeats in the field. When 
the war began, the South had the ready-made sol- 
diers, but the North had the wealth and industry, 
and soon made soldiers. It is no determination to 
be free that makes the citizen of the United States; 
his spirit has not that fierce quality supposed to 
belong to freedom. It is by no means Roman, a 
name that is often used by us, and with a well- 
established meaning, though not an application 
that is historically correct. 

It may be said, though liberty is always noble, 
that much of ours derives itself from the spirit 
of thrift which maintains a character that years 
ago manifested itself in the very different form de- 
scribed by Tacitus. But fortuitous circumstances 
modify, unaccountably, the characteristics of a 
people. In their dissensions, at the end of the 
last century, the people of the northwest of France; 
and, between the years 1808 and 1814, the people 
of nearly all parts of Spain, with such arms as they 
could find themselves, made war, and resisted with 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 249 

heroic valour what they thought was tyranny ; but 
in our late dissensions no such spirit manifested 
itself; no such heroism appeared; there was no 
resistance that was not made by organized armies. 
Was this the difference between a people who were 
enlightened, and had property and education, and 
a people who had but little of either, and were 
rude and ignorant? 



SECTION IV 



AUTHORITY. 



Authority celebrates itself and writes down the 
people. Our ways, once, were held up to nothing 
but scorn ; even science taught that everything 
dwarfed in America. These were the teachings. 
The French Emperor said in 1808, and he was 
echoed by whatever his tyranny had left of lit- 
erature in France, ^'^tout pour le peuple, rien par 
le peuph;'' but, vain man, could he have made 
the people he called his people what, since 1789, 
they had made themselves? Of those two rivals 
for public favour, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Jefferson, 
Mr. Jefferson was the less vulnerable character ; 
but he was the friend of the people, and that cov- 
ered him with defamation ; Mr. Hamilton, more vul- 
nerable, but orthodox and the friend of authority. 



17 



250 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

went comparatively unslandered. The abomina- 
tions that sustained the revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes, in wantonness of cruelty exceeded the 
horrors of the French Revolution, which were 
horrors with a cause ; but the revoker of that 
edict had instant celebration, and has remained, 
ever since, one of the heroes of history, while the 
men of the Revolution only began to be treated 
with any degree of mercy and forbearance some 
half a century after the fact. ' 

No liberty has been so much written up as that 
of England, it is aristocratical ; none has been the 
subject of such unmeasured vituperation as that of 
the United States, it is democratic. English insti- 
tutions possibly are better, possibly worse, than 
they will be in the more democratic day that is 
coming, and which may be a total failure ; but it is 
undeniable that their accompaniment, apparently 
their direct efl'ect, is a very low condition of the 
masses of the people. Our American institutions 
may prove a total failure; but it is undeniable that 
their accompanimxCnt, apparently their direct effect, 
is the high prosperity of the masses of the people. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 251 



SECTION V. 

ENGLISH AUTHORITY. 

In the earlier part of tlie last century, when 
men began to nwnke to their natural rights, philo- 
sophical minds of the Continent of Europe were 
struck with the composition of English society. 
They gave credit to the government ; but it was a 
society, formed to independent thought and exist- 
ence, on which they paused in admiration. Now, 
English authority, of all in Europe, has been the 
most liberal ; but what administration of it can be 
named to which England is indebted for liberty, or 
for any portion or atom of it? What act, measure, 
or course of measures of any monarch, minister, 
or statesman exercising authority, and not acting 
under compulsion from without, can be named, to 
w^arrant such an attribution? If English authority 
could have had its way, uninfluenced by external 
pressure, instead of being voted their annual sup- 
plies by a legislature, they would be living on 
feudal rights and the proceeds of crown lands. 
England owes her prosperity to her liberty, and 
her liberty to the efforts of society. Without that 
she would have neither liberty nor prosperity; but 
there is no period of English history when au- 



252 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

thority, left to its impulses, has not opposed any 
concession whatever to this liberty which has made 
the country all that it is. Were England united to 
the adjacent continent by a strip of land, making 
her government one of the sw^ord, she would be a 
kingdom of the third order. 

Liberty is the shame of authority in all coun- 
tries; to a degree, in the United States. Of nothing 
was Charles the Second, in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, so ashamed as of the liberties of his country, 
not then much ; blushing to acknowledge them to 
his cousin of France. The same shame mantled 
the cheek of the son of George the Third, in the 
nineteenth century, when, at the close of the long 
wars, between 1790 and 1815, by w^hich liberty was 
crippled, the despotic sovereigns of the Continent 
visited him in London to exchange congratulations. 
Even political movements of mere humanity, im- 
provements of the poor, of the prisons, of the law, 
have been forced on the English authority by soci- 
ety, and uniformly regarded by authority as loosen- 
ing its reins. 



THE AMERICAN" POINT OF VIEW. 253 



SECTION VI. 

FRENCH AUTHORITY. 



France, SO much cited contrariwise, is one of the 
evidences of the virtues and fortitude of society. 
By their Revolution of 1789, the French became a 
society highly democratic ; and, though from that 
day they have never had stable institutions, and 
not much of really free government, each succes- 
sive government, since 1800, which may be taken 
as the close of the Revolution, not excepting the 
First Empire, when military violence enabled the 
head of the State to regard more his own imperious 
will than that of the people, has found itself com- 
pelled to yield the point of the perfect equality of 
all before the law, to respect persons, to recognize 
the rights of property, to leave open to the meanest 
citizens the career of life, with full and free scope 
to pursue their individual happiness in their own 
way. 

These were blessings unheard of while society 
rested on the aristocratic basis. A democratic 
frame of society has enabled them, and nothing 
else could have enabled them, to go through the 
trials and withstand the difficulties attending per- 
petual changes of rulers. With no other frame 



254 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

could society have existed at all. The country 
must have lapsed into barbarism. Wealth and 
population have increased; material comforts, ad- 
mitting men's wants ought to be measured like 
those of the beasts that perish, are more improved 
than in any other nation of Europe. It may be 
true that democracy, which, in France, has ex- 
hibited some of its worst features, prevents their 
finding a slavish repose under the old authority; 
but the fact remains, and it stands impregnable to 
all the reasoning" brought n gainst their capacity for 
democratic liberty, that this people, a people with- 
out special adaptation to freedom, but the contrary ; 
not grave, not steady, without an educated lower 
class, passionately fond of that foe of liberty, war, 
of which it has experienced, since and before the 
Revolution, the bitterest trials, exists amid the 
contending kingdoms of Europe, its manufactures, 
arts, sciences, riches, and literature, all flourish- 
ing, indebted to no other source to which the most 
ingenious sophistry could trace their fortunes, but 
the democratic organization of their society. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 255 

SECTION VII. 

AUTHORITY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES. 

Before the emancipation of their slaves, the 
South, though weak in resources of wealth and 
population, were powerful as a society, and the 
North complained of their undue weight in the 
Union."^' They had, as a society, the tie of do- 
mestic slavery, which bound them firmly together. 
Authority, government, was a secondary consider- 

* No complaint ever was so well and ill founded : so well, 
because it rested in truth ; so ill, because tbey were re- 
proached witb steadiness, witb adherence to principles, with 
seeing to the representation of their States by the better sort 
of men. These were virtues that were forced on them by 
the weakness of their position as holders of slaves, and made 
easier to them by the simpler and purer manners of an agri- 
cultural people. No Northern man, though carrying with 
him his instinctive, irresistible aversion to slavery, ever saw 
the planting States without understandiug this and respect- 
ing it. Life is not only " a mingled yarn," but a yarn most 
stran"-ely mingled. The South were reproached with the 
means by which they earned their bread ; and slavery was 
most surely a mortal curse ; yet it not only consisted witb, 
but it actually produced and sustained, a society, on the 
whole, less erring than existed in the more prosperous 
North, and, probably, than in the emaucipated South will 
exist, without it. 



256 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

ation. Had secession happened in the North, the 
discontented States would have been found dis- 
united among themselves; but the slave-holding 
States went together, all in heart, and, all that 
could, in act. It is true that, of their population 
a portion being slaves, they lost much of that in- 
genuity, learning, education, thought, and other 
value of man, which comes not with the ignorant 
negro ; and of their not homogeneous communities 
one portion could not be in perfect sympathy with 
the rest ; but a society, so inferior in wealth and 
numbers as the South was, knitted together with 
the institution of slavery, had a tenacity which 
protracted the war with them, and made victory 
over inferior numbers and very inferior wealth 
difficult. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 257 



CHAPTER X. 

PREDICTIONS. 

SECTION I. 
AMERICAN PKEDICTIOX. . 

Those who founded our laws, in 1787, did not 
appreciate democracy, but they consented to it; 
and not only its roots are deeper, but its growth is 
more flourishing than then. Let those who would 
disparage it confess we have more prosperity than 
the men of '87 hoped, more democracy than they 
feared, more of both than we can account for. our- 
selves, who have them before our eyes, on any other 
principle than that the people are meant to take 
care of themselves. The greatest geniuses have 
failed in prediction. The federal gentlemen pre- 
dicted that the absence of state and ceremony in 
Mr. Jefferson's government, and in his own repub- 
lican manners, would be ruinous. They have 
proved an example to all who came after him. 

In the First Congress, a committee raised by the 
Senate reported in favour of styling the President 
" His Highness the President of the United States 



258 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" of America and Protector of their Liberties ;" but 
the more popular spirit of the House of Repre- 
sentatives declined to consider the subject. "What 
"can be," said Mr. Hamilton,* insisting to the 
convention on the difficulties of establishinsr a 
representative government for territory so ex- 
tended as that of the United States, — "what can 
" be the inducements for gentlemen to come six 
"hundred miles to a national legislature?" ''Let 
"the people elect a President," said other members 
of the convention, " and you throw the choice into 
"the hands of the Society of Cincinnati."f 

Prediction is always sure to assume premises 
which in the progress of events cease to exist, and 
they have no sooner ceased than the prediction falls. 
One hundred and fifty years ago, the national debt 

* Elliott's Debates, vol. i. p. 421 ; Yates's Minutes. 

t Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1205-1208 : Mr. Gerry, of 
Massachusetts ; Mr. Mason, of Virginia. 

" This government will commence in a modern aristocracy; 
"it is at present impossible to foresee whether it will, in 
"its operation, produce a monarchy, or a corrupt, oppress- 
" ive aristocracy ; it will most probably vibrate some years 
"between the two, and then terminate in the one or the 
" other." (George Mason : Elliott, vol. i. p. 490.) "It would 
" end either in monarchy, or a tyrannical aristocracy; which, 
"he was in doubt, but one or other he was sure." Same : 
Madison Papers, vol. iii. p. 1594. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 259 

of Great Britain was pronounced by the shrewdest, 
coolest, and most impartial observers to be ruin ; 
and bankruptcy, it was said, must soon follow; the 
error of the prediction was in assuming a taxable 
basis, in ignorance of the fact that the basis would 
be enlarged almost beyond reckoning. 

The world sleeps in some centuries; of late it 
has leaped forward. 

The opinions of individuals who have never seen 
democracy, nay, of those who have seen and con- 
demned it, of what avail are these opinions, or 
what ought they to avail, against the march of the 
world? There are subjects even in politics that 
are too vast for comprehension, and, as in religion, 
we must believe or disbelieve, but we cannot prove. 
In this new country of ours, where nothing is fixed 
but liberty, there is no stopping-place, when we 
have passed liberty, till we come to the rule of 
the sword. 

In 1787, the members of the federal convention, 
holding as fast as they could to the English Con- 
stitution, which, since then, has so changed that 
they would not recognize it if they saw it, hesi- 
tated upon the Constitution of the United States. 
Jefferson did not hesitate about that; but see how 
short he fell in his conclusions; for if he was right 
about great cities and thick population, democracy 



260 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

must be given up.* " It is my principle," he said, 
" that the will of the majority should prevail. If 
" they approve the proposed Constitution in all its 
"parts, I shall concur in it cheerfully, in hopes 
" they will amend it whenever they shall find it 
"works wrong. This cannot deceive us, as long 
"as we remain virtuous; and I think we shall be 
"so, as long as agriculture is our principal object, 
" which will be the case while there remain va- 
" cant lands in any part of America. When we 
"get piled on one another in large cities, as in 
" Europe, we shall be corrupt, as in Europe, and 
" go to eating one another, as they do there." 

Agriculture is no longer what it was, we are 
piled on one another in large cities, as in Europe, 
we are corrupt, as in Europe, and have gone to eat- 
ing one another, as they do in Europe; but de- 
mocracy has advanced notwithstanding; and the 
chances are more in favour of the people to-day 
than they were when Mr. Jefferson wrote in 1787. 
To say that he could not solve the problem is no 
disparagement of him ; and is no more than is to 
be said in any century about what is to follow in 
the next. 

* Letter to Mr.. Madison, Paris, 20th of December, 1187 : 
Jefiferson's Works, vol. ii. p. 332. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 261 



SECTION II. 

PREDICTION IS VAIN. 

To predict the success or failure of great social 
or political experiments, we must predict the ca- 
reer of the world, and the condition of mankind 
long after our time is past; an effort of which no 
mind is capable. 

Science predicts. Columbus predicted, if not the 
discovery of a new world, the discovery of a new 
way to the old one, and made his prediction good, 
a great physical fact; but not, for that is a political 
fact, the result of combinations which none could 
foresee, that his new world would advance the 
liberty and improve the happiness of mankind. 
Gibbon said,'"' triumphantly, in the earlier days 
of the French Revolution, predicting the downfall 
of democracy before the wealth and learning of 
society and power and discipline of governments, 
" In the civilized world the most numerous class is 
" condemned to ignorance and poverty." What he 
said was true in the last century, and is not untrue 
3'et; but, through combinations unforeseen, then, 
that same class, still poor and ignorant, has become 
formidable in all the best parts of Europe. It may 

* Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 271. 



*262 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

be true that the destiny of the world, if democratic, 
is to be bad, brutal, and tyrannical, like the mon- 
archical, like the aristocratical. The French Revo- 
lution excited hopes and fears, hopes for the Jeffer- 
sons, fears for the Gibbons and Burkes ; but there 
arose no prophet, not one man of the myriads of 
philosophers, thinkers, and writers on that great 
event, with anything like a correct political fore- 
cast of its consequences. They saw not the day 
when the degraded class was to demand liberty as 
a natural right, and none the less a right whether 
they abused it or not. 

Hume wrote the history of his country, and 
never was it dressed in more charming philoso- 
phy ; but when he came to predict, in his essay, 
"whether the British government inclines more 
" to absolute monarchy or to a republic," his phi- 
losophy went for nothing, and his prediction was 
wrong. The French writers of the last century 
who took the field for liberty, for which they 
deserve the warmer commendation, because a lit- 
erary merit so rare, do not seem to have formed 
the remotest idea of the upheaval to which they 
were contributing. Napoleon, a prodigious intel- 
ligence, lived when the world was at one of its 
climacteric periods; but in his whole career, and 
in all his voluminous writings and floods of conver- 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 263 

sation and thought that have come down to us, it 
nowhere appears that, though sprung, it may be 
said, from what was but the people, himself, he 
had any just conception either what they were to 
come to, or what they were capable of The same 
thing may be said of another far-seeing man, 
Francis Bacon, who, living at another climacteric 
period, poured his seminal ideas upon the world. 
Who would turn to his politics? Who would 
have turned to them even fifty years after his 
death, in the day of Hampden?* 

Time baffles us. Hamilton, a lover of his coun- 
try, and a lover of liberty, thought posterity would 
not be enough governed, as Jefferson, that they 
could not be too little governed ; he put his faith 
in government to work out the problem of liberty, 
as Jefferson, to the same end, relied on simple es- 
tablishments and plain habits, the absence of lux- 
ury, the contempt of money. Hamilton, who died 
in 180G, lived to witness the eclipse of his doc- 
trine; Jefferson has not been dead fifty years, and 

* In bis day the great were worsliipped ; and he was one of 
the worshippers. He said of his king, Heiir}' the Seventh, a 
crafty tyrant, that he was "a merciful prince; as in whose 
"time there were but three of the nobility that suffered. . . . 
" As for the severity used upon those which were taken in 
"Kent, it was but upon a scum of the people." History of 
the Reign of King Henry the Seventh. 



264 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

where is his? Washington, a colossus of a man, 
prophesied not; he may have had less confidence 
in democracy than his first minister, but he saw 
in it the greatest work men had ever undertaken; 
and he said to him, "^ he was determined the ex- 
" periraent should have a fair trial, and would lose 
"the last drop of his blood in support of.it."* He 
knew how vain it was to look into the seeds of 
time, and that even our own day is more than we 
can understand ; for, though the world as it ad- 
vances almost always improves, there never was a 
time, yet, when most of the wisest heads, if they 
could have been consulted .about it, would not have 
counselled retrogression. 

* Jefferson's Works, vol. vi. p. 288 : Letter of the 2d of 
January, 1814, to Walter Jones. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 265 



CHAPTER XL 



RECAPITULATION, 



Democracy has been sneeringly called zero; and 
it may, without a sneer, be called tabula rasa, for it 
is only what the people are pleased to write ; and 
they write, it must be admitted, in very dissimilar 
ways. In France it is equality. In England it is 
wages. In Italy and Spain, where skepticism and 
democracy abound, it is priests and soldiers. In 
Germany it is lectures. We began in America 
with admiration of the British Constitution, where 
the aristocracy do the work, and take their own 
reward, and the people's share is small of the 
fruits of the earth or the blessings of heaven. It 
was the ruin of its American disciples, for the 
people revolted against a policy which was to 
make them dependent on persons who regarded 
themselves as superior to the rest. They broke 
in, with their votes, and, setting aside this policy, 
put at the head of the government Mr. Jefferson. 

There began their mistake; they dismissed them- 
selves, then, to attend to their own affairs, leaving 

18 



266 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

those of the public to Mr. Jefferson, afterwards to 
Mr. Madison, afterwards to Mr. Monroe. All went 
well as long as they had men of the Revolution, 
which was a day of low wages and hard work ; 
or, it may be said, all went well till the country 
changed; until, from being a country, poor, simple, 
humble, and colonial, it aspired to empire, pride, 
and covetousness ; when all went wrong. The 
same weakness which made English liberty fail in 
1649, and French in 1789, the unwillingness, or 
inability, of the people, after possessing themselves 
of power, to use it, and its consequent transfer to 
a few hands, has been the failure of the people of 
the United States. They have the power, but they 
have not the control. 

It has been a dispute whether the States or 
the people made the Constitution. If it was the 
people, and the words of the preamble are to be 
taken literally, toe the people do ordain, they did 
not appreciate the magnitude of the task to which 
they summoned themselves. It was not enough to 
have good laws ; it was necessary to mount guard 
over them. True, no such thing had been seen 
by any living man ; perhaps it had been witnessed 
in no former age. It is very certain that in no 
modern age had the people thought themselves 
capable of it. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 267 

But looking at their conduct, as it ought to 
be looked at, they have not acted their part. 
They waited for rulers, and they came ; not 
Cromwell, not Robespierre, not the man whom 
Franklin promised ; but men of no reckoning, 
shoals of office-seekers and office-holders, came and 
volunteered to govern them. 

The secret the people seem to toil to discover is 
how to have freedom without trouble ; to invent 
institutions that will take care of themselves. De- 
mocracy, which never would have been heard of, 
in 1787, had not the people carried it through; 
which would have been overruled by the old 
federal party, soon after, had not the people, again, 
come to its rescue, neglects its work. It leaves it 
to an oligarchy, better and worse than that of 
their ancestors, better because not hereditary, 
worse because it is the oligarchy of hunger and 
nakedness, of plunder and corruption. Let him 
that doubts look around ! 

A very famous politician, to solve the problem, 
conceived the idea of giving to the people of his 
country power in the remote distance. They were 
to vote for voters who voted for others, and they 
voted for citizens who, again, chose other citizens 
on whom the power was to be conferred. It was 
thought a wonderful contrivance; but not only it 



268 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

did not succeed,* but it is exactly the system of 
straining influence from one rag to another, and 
forcing out of democracy an aristocracy, which 
American experience recognizes as the fruitful 
source of abundant mischiefs. Democracy is the 
people, or nothing. 

How can it be republican to separate the people 
from power ? But so effectually, by no more con- 
stitutional process than the arts of politicians, has 
it been done, that the people of the United States 
have lost the control of their affairs, though nearly 
every one of their federal administrations, for 
nearly sixty years, has affected to trace its origin 
to Mr. Jefferson himself. 

Suffrage is the only Constitutional denotement 
of the people's will; but suffrage is nothing un- 
less they prepare the ground for it. A great 
constructor of highways is reported to have said, 
" What you call the road is nothing but the 
"roof; the road is underneath." The suffrages of 
the people are a roof. The road is underneath, 
and the roof is nothing without support to it. In 
other countries of the world some man seizes power, 

* See it {Le Consulat et V Empire, vol. i. pp. 73-111) de- 
scribed by Thiers, and tJie fate of all the projects of Sieves 
for the French Republic, after the fall of the Directory in 
the year 1800. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 269 

and submits to suffrage a question that has no alter- 
native. In the United States, power is not obtained 
by seizing it, but suffrage is as much trifled with 
as if controlled by a crowned head. What does 
this mean ? Is it repugnance to the democratic 
task? Do we hate the trouble of it? Is citizen- 
ship irksome? There may be parts of Asia, but 
there is no part of Europe, where the people are 
despised and not represented ; the sovereign no- 
where despises the people, he endeavours to pro- 
pitiate them; in other words, he represents them. 
Their will prevails when it does not too much 
interfere with his own. Is this to be the extent 
of American democracy? When Mr. Jefferson 
said, educate the people^ he meant as citizens, not 
scholars. He is to be understood that popular 
government would be soon the worst government 
if the people took their eyes off it. It may be 
doubted how far the more educated classes are, as 
citizens, superior to the rest, till we come to the 
very bottom. They partake of every foible of 
humanity; they have no immunity from the 
heresies of political priests and doctors; and as 
to property, it is weakness as well as strength. 

If the situation is not upon us to which Frank- 
lin, whose tendencies were democratic, pointed, 
when he said Executive patronage would bring us 



270 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

to a master, has not that, for more than half a 
century, been upon us to which Hamilton, whose 
tendencies were aristocratic, pointed, when he said, 
" You nor I, my friend, may not live to see the 
"day, but most assuredly it will come, when every 
" vital interest of the state will be merged in the 
" all-absorbing question of who shall be the next 
"President"?* 

* See a conversation between Hamilton and Governor 
Levi^is, of New York, referred to in Hamilton's History of 
the Republic, vol. iii. p. 341. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 271 



CHAPTER XII. 

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
SECTION I. 

RECONSTRUCTION. 

Though in this day of democratic probation we 
were like beings translated to some new planet, 
where, to fix the qualities and magnitude of the 
simplest object, it must undergo the experiment 
of the touch ; and though all problems whatever 
of democratic policy with which we have perplexed 
ourselves since the time of Washington were yet 
unsolved, and just as doubtful as when Jefferson 
and Hamilton divided in opinion upon the earliest, 
and perhaps the simplest, of them, there is one 
point on which the people ought not to pause, 
namely, that of giving themselves a representation 
that is equal to their own level, in every branch of 
the public service. This is not the work of states- 
men ; it must be done by the broad and general 
people. He is a bad citizen who gives nothing to 
his country ; and he who gives only to the self- 
ish ends of political reward, gives nothing. We 



272 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

cannot live on statesmanship, though statesmen 
abounded ; nor can there be statesmen till there 
are citizens. How are we to prosper without good 
citizens ; without millions of them ? 

We fain would think the condition of the coun- 
try, to-day torn with factions, is attributable to 
late and great events. We flatter ourselves. It 
is fruit gathered from a tree of our planting, fifty 
years ago, the fruit of a neglected democracy, 
which has become in our mouths dust and bitter 
ashes. 

The people of the United States were treated 
by the politicians after the close of the war, in 
1865, exactly as the Germans were treated in 
1815, after the wars of the French Revolution. 
They were made nothing of We had been prom- 
ised union, and they had been promised liberty. 
When our war closed, the expectation of the 
people was to see, what they had been told, a 
thousand times, was to happen as soon as the 
last cannon was fired, a restoration of the Union 
as it had been, the reorganization of the States of 
the South, their Senators and members again in 
their seats in Congress, and their people and gov- 
ernments at home peacefully employed in repairing 
the ravages of battle. Nothing stood in the way. 
There was what General Grant called in his ex- 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 273 

amination before a committee of Congress " a 
" very fine feeling* manifested in the South," and 
the Northern policy was to avail ourselves of it. 
General Sherman's military convention of the 18th 
of April, 1865, with General Johnston,f providing 
for the re-establishment, forthwith, of the Southern 
States, was the true and correct reflection of the 
universal popular wish. 

But what would have been the effect? Content- 
ment to the people, not to the politicians. The 
Southern votes would once more have united with 
those of their Northern friends, and left the poli- 
ticians then uppermost in a minority. To prevent 

* See General Grant's testimony before the Judiciary Com- 
mittee of tlie House of Representatives, page 304 of the com- 
pilation of public papers 1865-70, by Mr. McPherson, Clerk 
of the House of Representatives. Published by Philp & 
Solomons, 1871, Washington. General Grant, ia his report 
to the President of December 18, 1865, after his "tour of in- 
" spection through some of the Southern States," gives his 
conclusion that "they are in earnest in wishing to do what 
"they think is required by the government, not humiliating 
"to them as citizens, and that if such a course was pointed 
" out they would pursue it in good faith." 

f It "guaranteed, so far as the Executive can, their polit- 
" ical rights and franchises, as well as their rights of person 
"and property, as defined by the Constitution of the United 
"States, and of the States respectively." See McPherson, 
1865-70, pp. 121, 122, for the convention at length. 



274 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

this, a scheme was imagined, the most extraordi- 
nary that ever brought shame to a people, and 
indignation to the cheek of freedom, that of sub- 
duing and mastering the Southern vote by giving 
the right of suffrage to their emancipated slaves. 
The sudden transfer of dominion from the master 
to the slave, history afforded no precedent of in 
any country; it was ruin in a form more cruel 
than ever was conceived before. 

The feeling against the poor blacks, a harmless 
race, so conscious of their inferiority that they 
had no desire to leave the humble position to 
which that Almighty power, whose decrees cannot 
be appealed from with impunity, had assigned 
them, was everywhere strong, and the question 
of elevating them to citizenship could not be sub- 
mitted to the people with even the remotest chance 
of success. At a period when there were twenty- 
four States in the Union, every State had disquali- 
fied them, by Constitutional law,* those of New 
England excepted, where there were almost no 
blacks to be disqualified. In 1865, in one of the 
New England States, the small State of Connec- 

* " The American Guide, comprising the Declaration of 
" Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitu- 
" tion of the United States, and the Constitutions of the 
"several States composing the Union." 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 275 

ticut,* the majority against giving them the right 
of suffrage was 6272. In Ohiof the majority 
against it, in 1867, when all possible efforts were 
made to overcome the prepossessions of the people, 
was 50,629. In New YorkJ a vote was taken, in 
1860, on allowing them a vote without a property 
qualification. In the city of New York the result 
was, yeas, 1640; nays, 37,471; in the State at 
large, yeas, 197,503; nays, 337,984; in 1864, a 
like proposition was defeated; yeas, 85,406; nays, 
224,336. In Illinois, § in 1862, a vote was taken 
on the absolute and total exclusion of all negroes 
from the State limits, when the yeas were 171,893; 
the nays, 71,306 ; on granting them the right to 
office and suffrage, the yeas were 35,649; the nays, 
211,920; for the enactment of prohibitory laws 
against their coming to or voting in the State, the 
yeas were 198,938; the nays, 44,414. No other 
votes of the people are known; but these may be 
taken as fair examples of the universal popular 
sentiment. 

Give to the ruling party, besides their proper 
strength, a certain number of States controlled by 

*"Por colored suffrage, 27,217; against, 33,489." Mc- 
Pherson, 1865-70, p. 120. 

t Congressional Globe, 1868, January 31, pp. 876-878. 
X McPherson, 1860-65, p. 241. § Ibid. 



276 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

negro votes, and against the power commanding 
such an engine* the rest of the Union might vote 
in vain. Tlie government could not be changed 
at the ballot-box, and our relief, like that of the 
people of Mexico, must be found in revolution. 

Great as the odds seemed to be against this 
dreadful scheme, and great as the crime must be of 
poisoning the fountain at which liberty must drink, 
party, with the means it had at its disposal, was 
not discouraged. The experiment began with what 
is called the thirteenth amendment, declaring 
slavery to be abolished in all parts of the United 
States. It was proposed to the States under a 
resolution of Congress of the 1st of February, 
1865, and ratified without difficulty. The actual 
abolishment of slavery had been effected, and the 
thirteenth amendment was a formal acknowledg- 
ment of what had already happened. 

The next step was more difficult; the fourteenth 
amendment. It was proposed to the States under 
a resolution of Congress of the 13th of June, 
1866.f By this the negroes were to be made 

* The States of the South would be like what, in England, 
were called Treasury Boroughs, members to represent which 
in Parliament were nominated by the minister of the Crown. 

f "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, 
"and subject to the jurisdictiqn thereof, are citizens of the 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 277 

citizens. The required constitutional majority of 
States to adopt an amendment is three-fourths. 
There were thirty-seven States. Twenty-one adopt- 
ed, thirteen rejected, and three did not vote. In 
the Northern States it had a party vote in the 
legishitive bodies, to which alone Congress com- 
mitted the amendment. In the South it was 
everywhere rejected.* They refused to make 

" United States, and of the State wherein they reside. IN'o 
" State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge 
" the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States ; 
" nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or 
" property without due process of law ; nor detiy to any person 
" within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." 

*" Virginia — Senate, January 9, 1867 — unanimously; 
"House — 1 for amendment. North Carolina — Senate, De- 
" cember 13, 1866 — yeas 1, nays 44; House — yeas 10, nays 
"93. South Carolina — Senate; House, December 20, 1866 
" — yeas 1, nays 95. Georgia — Senate, November 9, 1866 — 
"yeas 0, nays 36; House — yeas 2, nays 131. Florida — 
" Senate, December 3, 1866 — yeas 0, nays 20 ; House, De- 
" cember 1 — yeas 0, nays 49. Alabama — Senate, December 
" 7, 1866 — yeas 2, nays 27 ; House — yeas 8, nays 69. Mis- 
" sissippi — Senate, January 30, 1867 — yeas 0, nays 27; 
" House, January 25 — yeas 0, nays 88. Louisiana — Senate, 
"February 5, 1867 — unanimously; House, February 6 — 
"unanimously. Texas — Senate; House, October 13, 1866 
" — yeas 5, nays 67. Arkansas — Senate, December 15, 1866 
" — yeas 1, nays 24; House, December 17 — yeas 2, nays 
"68."— McPherson, 1865-70, p. 194. 



278 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

themselves hewers of wood and drawers of water 
to their slaves. 

Congress at once fiercely turned upon the ten 
late slave-holding States, of Virginia, North Caro- 
lina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, 
Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, to 
which they had appealed as States of the Union, 
to adopt the amendment, and of whose adoption of 
the thirteenth amendment they had availed them- 
selves. They declared, in what were called the 
reconstruction acts, that " no legal State govern- 
" ments or adequate protection for life and prop- 
" erty" existed in those States, annulled their civil 
authority, divided them into military districts, and 
ordered elections under military officers to be held 
for the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, the 
negroes voting.* 

* See Acts of the 2d of March and 23d of March, 1867, by 
which it was enacted that whereas no legal State Govern- 
ment or adequate "protection for life and property now exists 
" in the rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Caro- 
" lina, Greorgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, li^lorida, 
" Texas, and Arkansas, said rebel States shall be divided 
"into military districts and made subject to the military 
" authority of the United States," the President to " detail a 
"sufficient military force" to that end, and "all interference 
"under colour of State authority with the exercise of military 
" authority shall be null and void until the people of said 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 279 

It was done. On the 20tli of July, 1868, the 
Secretary of State, whose official duty it was, under 

" rebel States shall be by law admitted to representation in 
"the Congress of the United States; any civil governments 
" which may exist therein shall be deemed provisional only 
" and in all respects subject to the paramount authority of 
"the United States to abolish, modify, control, or supersede 
"the same," and until they shall be admitted to representa- 
tion "all persons shall be entitled to vote," "of whatever 
"race, colour, or previous condition, who have been resident 
"in said State for one year," "except such as may be dis- 
"franchised for participation in the rebellion," who are de- 
scribed to be, all who have "given aid or comfort to the 
" enemies of the United States," namely, nearly the whole of 
the white population, and, before the 1st of September, 186T, 
"the commanding general in each district," etc., "shall cause 
" a registration to be made" of voters, excluding disfranchised 
persons and including negroes, and "shall appoint as many 
" boards of registration as may be necessary," and after the 
registration is completed, " at such times and places therein 
" as the commanding general shall appoint and direct," " an 
" election shall be held for delegates to a convention for the 
"purpose of establishing a constitution and civil government 
" for such State," the delegates "to be apportioned among the 
" several districts" " by the commanding general," and, there 
upon, elections shall be held to determine for or against a 
convention, the election returns to be made to "the command- 
" ing general," who is to open the returns and " make procla- 
"mation thereof;" and if the majority of votes be for a 
convention, "the commanding general within sixty days" is 



280 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

Act of Congress of the 20th of April, 1818, to 
announce in the newspapers, in which were pub- 
lished the laws of the United States, the adoption of 
constitutional amendments, made his publication. 

Let it be observed that in voting constitutional 
amendments the States exercise their sovereignty ; 
they are remitted to their vote to adopt or reject 
parts of a constitutional compact which, in 1787-8, 
they voted to reject or adopt as a whole. There 
is no power in the federal government, neither in 
Congress, nor in the President, nor in the judges, 
nor in all combined, to amend the Constitution, or 

to give notice to the delegates elected to assemble in con- 
vention and frame a constitution, to be submitted to the 
voters at an election held as the election was held for dele- 
gates, "and the returns thereof shall be made to the com- 
" manding general of the district;" and if the votes shall 
ratify the constitution, v^^hich must "provide that the elective 
"franchise shall be enjoyed" without regard to "race, colour, 
"or previous condition," a copy of the constitution is to be 
forwarded to the President, who is to transmit it to Con- 
gress, and, if the provisions of the reconstruction acts 
have been all complied with, one of them being that the 
" State by a vote of its Legislature" shall have adopted the 
" amendment of the Constitution of the United States" 
"known as article fourteen, etc.," and the said State " con- 
" stitution shall be approved by Congress, the State shall be 
"declared entitled to representation, and Senators and Repre- 
" sentatives shall be admitted therefrom." 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 281 

declare it amended. The statute of 1818, for public 
convenience, no more, made it incumbent on an 
administrative officer, the Secretary of State, to 
publish amendments in the " newspapers author- 
" ized to promulgate the laws, with his certificate, 
"specifying the States by which the same may 
"have been adopted." The States exercise the 
power, the Secretary of State makes publication 

of it. 

The responsibility for the reconstruction laws, 
ordering, as they did, military elections, and the 
negroes to vote themselves the right of suffrage; as 
if female suffrage were made lawful by women 
voting it under the protection of the army of the 
United States; was divided among hundreds of 
persons, namely, the different members of the two 
Houses of Congress ; but the Secretary of State, 
Mr. Seward, had now, alone, to vouch that this 
fundamental change, effected by fraud and force, 
was free, lawful, and constitutional, and put his 
name and the seal of the United States to it. This 
he refused to do.* He stated two difficulties : first, 
that of counting States where the negroes voted 
themselves citizenship at elections held under mili- 
tary authority ; and, second, an equally obvious 

* See Mr. Seward's publication of tlie 20th of July, 1868 : 
McPherson, 1865-70, p. 379. 

19 



282 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

difficulty, that of counting the States of Ohio and 
New Jersey, which, at first, voted adoption, and 
then changed their votes and voted to reject. 
Could they change their votes ? Were they to be 
counted, or not? If they could change their votes, 
there were not three-fourths of the States for adop- 
tion. If they could not change, could the six 
States of Florida, North Carolina, Arkansas, Loui- 
siana, South Carolina, and Alabama, which were 
now returned as voting for the amendment, but 
which at first voted against it? If a State could 
change its vote, two votes were wanted ; if it could 
not, six votes were wanted. 

Congress, the day after Mr. Seward's refusal, 
by joint resolution declared the amendment part of 
the Constitution of the United States.* What is 

* Were these proceedings violence, also, upon arithmetic ? 
When the 13th amendment passed, there were 36 States, and 
27, which is exactly | of 36, voted for it. (See Mr. Seward's 
publication, McPherson, 1865-10, p. 6.) One more State 
had since come into the Union, and there were now 37 States. 
It was claimed that 29 States voted for the 14th amendment; 
8 against it. In counting generally, dollars for example, 29 
is f, and more than |, of 37, for the dollar can be taken by 
fractions, halves, quarters, etc., thus: $27f is | of $37. But 
a State cannot be divided, like a dollar, to count for the f 
majority. If this be so, the way to count is to take, first, 
that number of States of which 4 is a multiple, then take | 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 283 

the moral of this tale, the most disgraceful of all 
in American history ? The moral is that the peo- 
ple had come to be nothing but a despised crowd. 
It had been long since the few accounted to the 
many; and these deeds of reconstruction were the 
deeds of politicians who were responsible to them- 

of that number, then add to the original number the ad- 
ditional State or States ; and, without dividing any of them, 
but taking their number as a whole multiple of 4, add their |, 
thus : 

. Of 36 States, the assenting | were . . . 2T 

The additional State must be one of 4, of which 

there must be assenting .... 3 

Making requisite, for a f majority of the 37 States, 

assenting States ...... 30 

There were but assenting States . . . .29 

Seven days after the joint resolution, and eight days after 
his first publication (McPherson, 1865-70, p. 417), Mr. Sew- 
ard made another, in which he says that Georgia, also, after 
having refused had now assented, and putting himself, not on 
the facts, not saying that the department had notice that the 
amendment " had been adopted according to the provisions 
" of the Constitution," as the law of the 20th of April, 1818, 
required, but that the States had " taken the proceedings 
" hereinafter recited upon or in relation to the ratification of 
"the said proposed amendment," which he does not answer 
for, puts himself on the joint resolution of eight days before, 
and declares the amendment adopted. 



284 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

selves. As was said by one of the makers of that 
Constitution these men trifled with,* though him- 
self no friend of the people, " Every one knows 
"that where responsibility ends, fraud, injustice, 
" tyranny, and treachery begin. "-j- 

SECTION II. 

POLITICAL MISTAKES. 

Great mistakes have been made about democ- 
racy, and even about liberty. Mr. Fox and his 
friends, in and out of Parliament, thought French 
liberty established, and so thought nearly all 
France, when the Constituent Assembly made 
their Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the 
rush followed to the Tribune, of priests and nobles, 

* Gouverneur Morris, in his letter, quoted supra, of the 
'5th of February, 1811. 

■f- The fifteenth amendment, which declared that the right 
of no citizen of the United States to vote, whatever his race, 
colour, or previous condition of servitude, should be abridged 
by any State, depends, for its efi'ect in giving a vote to the 
negro, on the fourteenth amendment, by which is taken from 
the States the right to say who are their citizens. It was 
published by the Secretary of State the 30th of March, 1870, 
and obtained by similar means. It depends for validity on 
the fourteenth in this, that without the fourteenth each State 
would regulate its own suffrage. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 285 

to lay down their titles, tithes, feudal rights, and 
prerogatives ; but it was a mistake. 

The five-and-twenty millions of French were 
the same creatures they had been the day before ; 
not able to take care of themselves, still less of the 
State ; and Committees of Safety, Constitutional 
and National Conventions, Directories, Consuls, 
Emperors, Kings, Republics of all sorts, have fol- 
lowed, each falsely promising to the people that 
liberty which Mr. Fox thought they had long be- 
fore, and which they never would, to this day, have 
had a particle of, but for those efforts of their own, 
which brought about democracy ; not government, 
only democracy, and democracy not grafted on 
laws and constitutions, but a natural growth; the 
effect of their owning their lands and working for 
themselves. 

The people of the United States thought they had 
only to riot in their liberty after they had secured 
their independence; which, also, proved a great mis- 
take ; and in 1787, to save liberty from the ship- 
wreck of disorder, the Federal Constitution was re- 
sorted to. In 1860, the Federal Constitution itself 
was wrecked, and libertj^ got among the breakers; 
and still labours with the tempest. But we were 
not, either in 1787 or 1860, like the French in 
1789, a people just emancipated from the vassal- 



286 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

age of ignorance. We were as free as any people 
ever were. We were a democratic society, and 
had no first step to make. It is undeniable that it 
was the people themselves who prepared the crisis, 
both in 1787 and 1860. The country had been in 
their uncontrolled keeping. From 1776 to 1789 
we had a very insufficient government ; but from 
1789 to 1860 we had what was called, and, it may 
be, was the best in the world, yet we broke down. 

If the view which has been taken of the imme- 
diate causes of the crisis of 1860 be wholly and 
absolutely erroneous, still the fact remains that a 
spirit of faction, whether of the South, or of the 
North, or both, overcame us in the midst of the 
enjoyment of the very highest worldly prosperity; 
and it was the faults of the people that brought 
the country to the verge of ruin. Though there 
had not been a negro slave in the whole country, 
those faults would have brought us down. 

As a people, we are very unlike the French, 
and our condition, bounded by two oceans, with a 
continent to ourselves, is far from that of a people 
of the European Continent, with their neighbours' 
bayonets always at their throats ; but we are in 
the United States, and have been for many years, 
as the French are, a democratic people, with a 
government plunging from bad to worse. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 287 

Our ancestors fear ed d emocracy, so did their 
ancestors, and the ancestors of their ancestors for 
ages. The masses of the people differed with them, 
and pledged instincts against wisdom; a pledge not 
yet redeemed or forfeited. To put the wise in the 
wrong, the people must become sentinels of de- 
mocracy, and cease to be only devourers of its 
fruits. 

Its progress for a few generations has been said 
to mix the elements, and bring down among the 
poorest and lowest of the community the descend- 
ants of those who. but just before, were the highest, 
and raise up to be the highest, if they have merit, 
the humblest and most despised. This is democ- 
racy and natural justice, a crucible in which many 
prejudices of this country and an infinity of those 
of the older ones will be melted down ; whether 
for good or ill the future will say. 



SECTION III. 

DESTINY. 

We talk of our destiny. Wisdom is destiny ; 
weakness is destiny. What we call destiny is 
nothing but the conduct of men ; it is subject to 
courses of folly, to counsels of prudence. With 
untoward events we cannot flourish. The mill of 



288 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

democracy will not grind everything. Our destiny 
trembled in the balance in the late civil war. If 
the country had been broken in two pieces, it would 
have been broken in twenty, and then what would 
have been our destiny? See the consequences, to- 
day, before our eyes, of a short war fought by two 
parties, and imagine the effects of ten or twenty 
years' slaughter and confusion among as many 
petty States. If the war had gone in favour 
of the South, and the North were now in the 
condition the South is in, would we think we 
flourished ? Until now, no country of which there 
is any record ever was in a worse condition nine 
years after a revolution was over, than it was 
before it began. 

Governor McKean,* writing to Mr. Adams, 
reckons the quota of population that supported 
the revolution of 1776: "In your favour of the 
" 26th of November last, you say that you ven- 
"' tured to say that about a third of the people of 
" the Colonies M^ere against the revolution. It re- 
'' quired much reflection before I could fix my 
"opinion on this subject; but on mature delibera- 
" tion I conclude you are right, and that more than 

* Thomas McKean, member of the Confederate Congress, 
signer of the Declaration of Independence, Governor and 
Chief Justice of Pennsylvania under the Constitution. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 289 

" a third of influential characters were against it."* 
The revolution these veterans, crowned with success 
and honour, were reviewing, was a political revo- 
lution, and led by heroes. What would they have 
thought had they been told that, in less than fifty 
years, another revolution would come, social as 
well as political, not led by heroes, indeed, with- 
out any leaders at all, for those who led wanted to 
go in quite another direction ? If they had been 
told then that in 1860 their descendants would 
send hungry delegates to miserable conventions, to 
inaugurate a revolution, not with a third of influ- 
ential characters against it, but every thinking man 
in the whole country, they would have trembled 
before such a destiny. Where would be our des- 
tiny if instead of Mr. Jefferson's acquiring Loui- 
siana, in 1803, from the French, the English had 
conquered it from the Spaniards, in 1800, and be- 
come our neighbours along the whole line of our 
western frontier ? 

Demagogueism tells us it is our destiny to be 
free without care, without effort; by race. Race 
is much ; our mistake is in supposing there is a 
race superior to all the rest, and that our own. 
We overrate ourselves. Had the Spaniards who 

* See his leiter of January, 1814 : Life aad Works of John 
Adams, vol. x. p. 81. 



290 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROxM 

colonized the southern parts of the American con- 
tinent found there, instead of gold and precious 
stones, a soil yielding only the reward of hard 
work; had they not been under pupilage to vice- 
roys, with vice-regal courts and great establish- 
ments ; had they not been shut off with monastic 
jealousy from the rest of the world, and ruled, as 
the Austrian and Bourbon families ruled people, 
and down to so recent a period as that of the war 
of independence, in Spain, which began in 1808, 
and produced the independence of the Colonies as 
well as of the mother-country, the Spanish blood 
might have been boasting, and with as much 
reason as ours, that it was the blood of freedom. 
If our English ancestors owe such freedom as they 
have to geographical position, to their inhabiting 
an island, let us ponder well how much we owe 
to inhabiting a new world of sparse population and 
abundant food. 

It is hard to tell where liberty will flourish. 
The people of Scotland have been taught freedom 
by their association with the people of England. 
Compare the qualities of the two people, and the 
inference would be that England would have to 
borrow freedom from the Scotch. If to keep alive 
liberty to the point of democracy require excep- 
tional qualities in men, what people shall enjoy it ? 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 291 

Are we to think that if the Swiss, or the Dutch, 
little nationalities that conquered their freedom 
from giants, had settled this coast of ours, and 
could have protected the infancy of tlieir Colonies, 
their descendants would not be free ? Liberty has 
been cast upon us, and not too well used. As 
Colonies, till the Stamp Act passed in 1765 we 
complained of nothing; and after its repeal, of 
nothing, till the Townshend Act of 1767, when 
our troubles began again. The narrative in the 
Declaration of Independence takes up our story 
after the quarrel had begun. '^ Our poverty did 
not tempt the home government. They did not 
trample on us. Troops were not sent to oppress 
us and eat out the substance of the people; our 
burdens were self-imposed ; provincial rule was 

* See what Franklin said to the House of Commons in 
February, 1766: "The temper of America towards Great 
"Britain before the year 1763 . . . was the best in the 
" world. They submitted willingly to the government of the 
" crown, and paid, in their courts, obedience to the acts of 
"Parliament. . . . They cost you nothing in forts, citadels, 
"garrisons, or armies to keep them in subjection. They 
" were governed by the country at the expense of a little 
" pen, ink, and paper ; they were led by a thread." Sparks's 
Franklin, vol. iv. p. 169. And see the Address of Congress 
to the people of Great Britain even as recently before the 
Declaration of Independence as the 5th of September, 1774. 



292 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

without pomp. When the war of the Revolution 
came, it was a duel fought on the point of honour ; 
it was not, like most wars of rebellion, the des- 
perate effort of a wretched people to redeem them- 
selves from bondage and misery. We fought for 
ideas. Twelve Colonies took up the quarrel of 
one, in which, and perhaps in all the Colonies, 
but less in some than in others, the idea of inde- 
pendence, contending with attachments to Eng- 
land, long had been ripening. To this day of our 
national life we have been put to but one great 
test. The lives of nations, like those of indi- 
viduals, must be a struggle ; but, down to the time 
of the civil war, comparing our miseries with 
those of the rest of the w,orld, our wars with 
theirs, our commotions and their events with 
commotions and events elsewhere, what has there 
been to swell the democratic flood beyond its 
banks? It is misery that ruins nations, and their 
liberties, if they have any. We, first, began our 
acquaintance with it in 1860. We had our hard- 
ships in the Revolutionary war, and our difficulties 
under the old Confederacy when the war was over; 
and afterwards, in settling the poise of our new 
institutions; again, in the formation of parties, 
amid distractions arising out of the earthquake in 
France ; our neutral position was difficult among 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 293 

the contending parties to the hostilities that fol- 
lowed ; but how small were these to the troubles 
with which the rest of the world laboured ! It 
may be truly said that there has been no day of 
our short life when, if democracy had sunk into 
the earth, the aristocracies of the world might not 
have clapped their hands, and shouted over us in 
just and reasonable exultation 

Our destiny was democracy, and that is already 
fulfilled, for we never shall be more democratic 
than we are. The rest, which is the means of 
enjoyment of it, is uncertain. It depends on our- 
selves. We may be more free, more happy, more 
prosperous than v^^e are, or less. What may we 
justly boast ? That we are an intelligent and en- 
ergetic people unfettered by prejudices. But their 
intelligence and energies, politically, have been 
directed for them, not by them. 

Is democracy to prove so poor a thing as bad 
government, with the right in the people to change 
it when it becomes insufferable ? Is the democratic 
era to give us nothing better than the monarchical 
and aristocratic? The American citizen gives to 
his country ten minutes in the year, the time 
required to cast his vote ; he must give ten hours. 
Let him do no more than that, and the people will 
be represented; government will reflect the people. 



294 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

and when they are reflected, democracy can do no 
more. Time must do the rest. It is not certain 
that under the influence of the people government 
will go well ; but it is certain that without it all 
must go wrong. 

We do not need the tonic of a war to nerve our 
institutions, the idea which Gouverneur Morris* 
attributed to Hamilton. Time and habit will do 
it; the government will gain respectability, and 
the people will not lose it. They are a cement 
that gives respectability to things in older countries, 
which men accustomed to liberty can scarce believe 
when they behold them. 

Nearly everywhere in Europe, except in Eng- 
land, are to be seen soldiers, and there an assem- 
bly of a few hundred common-looking men settle 
everything, for no other reason than because they 
are supposed to represent the people; as some of 
them do, but all profess it. 

The wants of liberty may be irreconcileable with 
speculative thinking; public sufl'rage may be gross, 
the press a monster, jury trial unintelligible, and, 
as to deliberative bodies, they have been, at all 
times, the ridicule of high intelligences, their de- 
lays, their hesitations, their uncertainties, their 
many absurdities. 

* See his letter, ut supra, of the 5th of February, 1811. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 295 

If our government is to be strong, its strength 
must come from below. It can never have a 
strength of its own, till the day comes for govern- 
ment which is strong because either it is aristo- 
cratic, or is maintained by soldiers. Locke, a friend 
to liberty, when he put his hand to institutions for 
the Colony of North Carolina, did not recognize 
this fact, and failed. Franklin was one of the 
most practical of men ; but, with the ideas of his 
day, he had it put into the Constitution of Penn- 
sylvania that no change should be made in it by 
the people without first obtaining the consent of a 
board of censors. He wanted to check the people, 
and they cancelled his constitution, board of cen- 
sors, and all. There may be checks, and there 
may be balances, that is, checks and balances of 
delegated authority, one department checking an- 
other; but power itself, what is to check that? 

What shall check the power of the people? The 
true and only answer is, the power of the States, 
and their subdivisions, down to the ward republics. 
Said Mr. Dickinson,* whose high-toned opinions, 
in the convention, have been quoted, " If ancient 
" republics have been found to flourish for a mo- 
" ment only, and then vanish forever, it only 
"proves that they were badly constituted; and 

* Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 778. 



296 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM 

" that we ought to seek for every remedj for their 
" diseases. One of these remedies he conceived to 
" be the accidental lucky division of this country 
" into distinct States; a division which some seemed 
"desirous to abolish altogether. ... In case of a 
" consolidation of the States into one great republic, 
" we might read its fate in the history of smaller 
" ones. 

There is not one fault of the institutions of the 
country, which they vainly would attempt to cor- 
rect by constitutional change, that is not open to 
correction by the people themselves. Let the 
people so administer them as to give, in the Union, 
their independence to the States, and, in the States, 
their independence to local governments. 

In the Virginia Convention of 1829, where many 
good and sensible men met to consider forms of 
government, and the question was upon limiting 
suffrage, one side said. If you fix a limit, what is 
it to be ? If of money, how much money ? If of 
knowledge, how much knowledge ? You will find 
nothing, such was the argument, that is not open 
to the question how much, but the land. The 
land, said they, is universal, and the choice is be- 
tween freehold suffrage with a great universal 
natural boundary, and, what you choose to call 
universal, with no boundary at all. But how are 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 297 

the liind-holders better than the others? It is the 
neglect of" the duties of citizenship that we find to 
be the difficulty, and the holders of property are 
the most neglectful of all. 



THE END. 



:iO 




\ ■ 

FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY 



BEGARDBD 



FROM THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. 



BY 



CHARLES INGERSOLL. 



IlIBFlARY OF CONGRESS.! 



" La liberty 
bien sains poi 



\ f i.lmp (iloanriqht ^fo. f faut des estomacs 

; 2^ ^ ^'--'4 J J. Rousseau. 

..^^^ 



Poi ^ 






I UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. | 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1875. 



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now ready. 

HAZLITT'S LIFE OF NAPOLEON. The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte. 
By William Hazlitt. Illustrated with Steel Plates. 3 vols. Large 
12mo. Extra cloth, $4.50; sheep, $6.00. 

FORSTER'S LIFE OF DICKENS. The Life of Charles Dickens. By 
John Forster, author of the "Life of Landor," etc. Illustrated with 
Steel Plaies and Wood-cuts. 3 vols. 12mo. Extra cloth, $6.00; half 
calf, gilt, $12.00. 

THE WORKS OF W. H. PRESCOTT. New and Revised Edition. Edited 
by J. Foster Kirk. 15 vols. 12mo. With Portraits from Steel, and 
Maps. Per vol., extra cloth, $2.25; half calf, gilt extra, $4.50. 

ALLIBONE'S DICTIONARY OF POETICAL QUOTATIONS. By S. 
Austin Allibone LL D. 8vo. Extra cloth, $5.00. 

THE CONCORDANCE TO SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. An Index 
to every Word therein contained. By Mrs. Horace Howard Furness. 
With the Poems appended. One vol. Octavo. Bound in extra cloth, 
gilt top, $4.00. Uniform with Furness's Variorum Edition of Shake- 
speare. 

*** For sale by all Booksellers, or will be sent, free of expense, on receipt 
of price, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 

PUBLISHERS, BOOKSELLERS, AND IMPORTERS, 

715 .\ND 717 M.iRKET Street, Phil.mielphia. 



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